Bulgarian Gymnast Rocks YouTube

Boyanka Angelova’s 2008 performance at the European Junior Championship in Turin was promoted to the front page of YouTube, garnering over 7 million views in a couple of days.

Horseback Riding in Veliko Tarnovo

There are many places in Bulgaria where you might be offered to ride a horse, often for lots of money, near the seaside, by somewhat unsavoury-looking characters. Those horses are also likely not very well treated, and spend most of their days being dragged around in the heat along the beaches of the Black Sea.

However, there is at least one stable in the country that offers horseback riding as an experience, at reasonable rates, and couples it with a thorough introduction to the stable’s 50-some horses and a tour of their living environment.

Ivet Lalova: European 100-metre Dash Champion

Ivet Lálova, a 28-year old Bulgarian, became the European champion in the 100 m dash on June 28, 2012 in Helsinki, Finland.

The daughter of a competitive sprinter, she placed fourth overall in 100 m at the 2004 Olympics and won the 200 m gold medal at the European Indoor Championship in Madrid the following year. With a record of 10.77s set in 2004, she is the tenth-fastest woman of all time and the fastest white woman in the world at the moment.

Her career was interrupted by an idiotic accident when a careless athlete collided with her during a warmup on June 14, 2005, breaking her femur. Since then, she has been steadily regaining her speed after seven surgical interventions and a long and difficult recovery. It’s great to see her at the top of her game and I look forward to cheering her on in London.

USA ’94: The “Bronze Summer” of Bulgaria’s Golden Boys

Among the national soccer teams of the world, the elite group of “top” teams has gradually bubbled up – Brazil, Argentina, England, Italy, Spain, Holland, Germany, France, Portugal, and so on. These teams invariably make up the finals of European and World Cups and trade shots on goal, victories and titles. Every subsequent tournament tends to be a reshuffling of these teams in the “best-of” listing.

But sometimes there are surprises at these tournaments. For example, South Korea reached the semi-finals in 2002 and Greece won the European title as a host in 2006. And yet, the biggest surprise in a world soccer tournament in the last twenty years took place at the World Cup finals in the USA in 1994.