Stanka Zlateva Wins Gold in European Wrestling
Bulgaria's Stanka Zlateva grabbed the gold medal in the women's 75kg category at the European Wrestling Championships in Vantaa, Finland.
The world's eyes are on London as the 2012 Olympic Games unfurl.
Bulgaria sent 63 athletes to the 30th Olympics and all of them fought or are still fighting a tough battle.
Bulgarian media, which are crucial for communicating the events in London, especially for the part of the population which does not speak English or any other foreign language and is unlikely to use the Internet to dig deeper into the topic, are doing a questionable job.
Success stories will be success stories, and as such they will always get (more than) enough publicity.
However, how do we deal with the no-success stories? Vulture-style?
In the case of Maria Grozdeva, for instance, a two-time Olympic shooting champion and five-time medalist, who did not manage to reach the 25-meter pistol final, a range of media outlets came up with titles like "Failure for Maria Grozdeva."
Although she had warned upon her departure for London that people were expecting too much of her and it was a burden, the journalists were hot on her heels all of the time, especially after "the failure."
Certain media outlets appear creepily happy about having Grozdeva, who is still extremely sensitive about her performance, burst into tears while trying to account for her mistakes.
Try googling the names of Bulgarian athletes who did not make it into the semi-finals or finals of their disciplines.
You are certain to find a series of articles titled "Failure for X."
Among "the failures" are top tennis players Grigor Dimitrov and Tsvetana Pironkova, who lost their singles matches and will not compete in the couples tournament, badminton player Petia Nedelcheva, who was defeated by Adrianti Firdasari, archer Yavor Hristov, who was eliminated in the 70 m archery tournament, you name it.
If media outlets are so eager to report alleged downfalls, where were they all of the years the athletes spent preparing for the big race?
Non-specialized newspapers, as well as TV and radio programs in Bulgaria, have 90% of their coverage devoted to FOOTBALL.
It is football, football players, football scandals, football transfers, football-driven heaps of money, football fans, football hooliganism, you name it.
Why are Bulgarian media so grossly preoccupied with football, which is actually one of Bulgaria's major failures?
Where is the support media outlets owe to the other athletes, or is it that they are learning their names just now?
Whose failure is it that Bulgaria's non-football sport stars have no loud and cohesive fan base?
Is it the mediators' failure? How about a more modest approach with titles then?
If we look at history, there are not many cases in which relations between Bulgaria and Russia at the state level were as bad as they are at the moment.
The term “Iron Curtain” was not coined by Winston Churchill, but it was he who turned it into one of the symbols of the latter part of the twentieth century by using it in his famous Fulton speech of 1946.
Hardly anything could be said in defense of the new government's ideological profile, which is quite blurry; at the same time much can be disputed about its future "pro-European" stance.
Look who is lurking again behind the corner – the tandem of Advent International and Deutsche Bank, respectively the buyer of the Bulgarian Telecom Company in 2004 and the advisor of the Bulgarian government in the sweetest deal of the past decade, seem t
We have seen many times this circus which is being played out during the entire week and it only shows one thing - there is no need of a caretaker government in Bulgaria.
You have certainly noticed how many times President Rosen Plevneliev used the phrase “a broad-minded person” referring to almost every member of his caretaker government.
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