Stefka Kostadinova celebrates her world high jump record in Rome (© Getty Images)
Stefka Kostadinova’s world high jump record of 2.09m has remained unbeaten ever since she cleared that auspicious height at the 1987 World Athletics Championships, and it is fitting that her name is among the current list of global record-holders as the Bulgarian Athletics Federation celebrated its centenary on Friday (24)
To date, Bulgarian athletes have set 17 ratified world records outdoors and another three indoors, although only Kostadinova’s mark remains on the record books.
However, the curious fact that all these record setters have been women would probably have seemed unbelievable at the time the federation was established 100 years ago.
Like many eastern and central European countries, organised athletics in Bulgaria had started to take hold at the end of the 19th century in boy’s schools and colleges in the bigger towns and cities.
Stefka Kostadinova (© Getty Images)
“Come to Paris”
In the case of Bulgaria, historians have attributed this to the influx and influence of Swiss physical education teachers who were regularly employed in these institutions.
After the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 came to an end, men-only sports clubs in Sofia, Varna and Plovdiv were also established. Even though the focus of attention was on football, athletics events also periodically took place.
This somewhat ad hoc situation continued until 1923 when the International Olympic Committee sent an invitation to the Bulgarian National Sports Federation (BNSF) for the country to compete at the Olympic Games in Paris the following year – having only previously been represented at the Olympics when one of the aforementioned Swiss teachers living in the capital Sofia made his way to Athens in 1896 and competed as a gymnast under the Bulgarian banner – motivated by wanting to swell its numbers from the paltry 28 nations, 25 of whom competed in athletics, that went to Antwerp in 1920.
Consequently, the Bulgarian National Olympic Committee was created on 30 March 1923.
The Athletics Committee of the BNSF took charge of trying to select athletes for Paris and began sending out weekly bulletins giving updates on qualification standards, training programmes, measuring out running a 100m running track and other news such as how to buy running spikes from overseas suppliers since none were manufactured or stocked in Bulgaria.
Making history
Among these items of information was an announcement that trials had been organised at the Sofia racecourse on 24-25 May and, accordingly, on the first day of Bulgaria’s very first national athletics competition, the Bulgarian federation was formed.
Ultimately, Bulgaria sent four athletes to Paris as part of a 24-strong team in four sports. However, despite a national athletics championships being inaugurated in 1926 – again only men’s events, the first women’s championships came along in 1936 and it was to be 1952 before the sprinter Tsvetana Berkovska became the first Bulgarian female athlete to go to the Olympics – there was little progress over the coming years after these promising beginnings.
It was not until the second half of the 20th century, with Bulgaria having not been invited to the London 1948 Olympics due to its role as a member of the Axis in World War II, and a radical change of the political environment, that athletics began to flourish.
As part of the post-World War II Soviet Bloc, organised sport started to play a much greater role in the culture and society of ordinary Bulgarians across the country, and this was combined with a noticeable rise in living standards from the mid-1950s onwards.
Bulgaria hosted its first Balkan Athletics Championships in 1958, having sent athletes to the very first one in Athens in 1930, and in 1960 sent its biggest ever Olympic athletics contingent of six men and four women to Rome, with pole vaulters Hristo Hristov and Dimitar Hlebarov memorably making the final and finishing 10th and 11th.
Landmarks by Stoykovski, Yorgova and Blagoeva
Four years later, Virzhiniya Mihaylova just missed out on a medal when finishing fourth in the Tokyo 1964 Olympic Games discus, and a landmark was achieved in 1966 when triple jumper Georgi Stoykovski, who was seventh in Tokyo, won Bulgaria’s first continental title at the 1966 European Athletics Championships.
Mikhail Zhelev also won the 1969 European 3000m steeplechase gold medal.
However, during the 1970s and 1980s the headlines were dominated by Bulgaria’s female athletes, starting with Diana Yorgova winning the country’s first Olympic athletics medal when she finished second in the Munich 1972 long jump.
Another silver went to high jumper Yordanka Blagoeva a few days later but just 20 days after having watched Germany’s Ulrike Meyfarth take Olympic gold on home soil with a world record-equalling 1.92m, Blagoeva improved that mark by two centimetres to 1.94m in Zagreb.
It was the first of a plethora of world records set by Bulgarian women across a 16-year period that culminated in an epic period of two years between 1986 and 1988 that saw not only Kostadinova revise the record books three times but five successive reductions in the 100m hurdles world record, four of them by Yordanka Donkova and another by her compatriot and rival Ginka Zagorcheva.
Donkova’s final mark of 12.21 on home soil in Stara Zagora on 20 August 1988 remained as the standard for 28 years until USA’s Kendra Harrison improved it to 12.20 in 2016.
Just over a month after the last Bulgarian world record to date, Donkova flew to gold at the Seoul 1988 Olympic Games in an Olympic record of 12.38. Bulgaria’s first Olympic athletics gold had been won by shot putter and 1972 bronze medallist Ivanka Khristova 12 years earlier in 1976 to fulfil her role as favourite having set world records in successive days in July 1976.
Women were mostly the ones taking the plaudits during Bulgarian athletics’ halcyon period in these two decades, but there were a few men taking medals and titles as well.
Markov takes triple gold
Following Petar Petrov’s 100m bronze at the Moscow 1980 Olympic Games for Bulgaria’s first ever men’s athletics medal, triple jumper Khristo Markov became the first and, so far, only men’s Olympic champion when he took gold in Seoul to add to his 1986 European and 1987 world titles.
Khristo Markov at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul (© Getty Images)
It's not a matter for much debate to say that Markov is Bulgaria’s greatest ever male athlete.
Unfortunately, the 21st century has seen the current generation of Bulgarian athletes unable to emulate their predecessors.
Kostadinova’s 1995 world title and Tereza Marinova’s Sydney 2000 Olympic Games triple jump gold were the last occasions when the Bulgarian national anthem of Mila Rodino was played on a global stage.
No Bulgarian athlete has won a medal at the World Athletics Championships since 2007, although there was a moment to savour when two-time European Athletics Championships high jump silver medallist Mirela Demireva followed in the footsteps of Blagoeva and Kostadinova to finish second at the Rio 2016 Olympics.
Off the track, the Bulgarian federation has also played its part in being part of the global athletics family.
In addition to the World University Games being staged in Sofia, the Bulgarian capital staged the 1971 European Athletics Indoor Championships and, more recently, the 1990 World Athletics U20 Championships and 2012 World Half Marathon Championships were held in Plovdiv and Kavarna respectively.
In 2020, Dobromir Karamarinov became the European Athletics President and currently sits on the World Athletics Council to extend Bulgaria’s influence in the corridors of power.
Phil Minshull for World Athletics Heritage (with thanks to Anton Bonov and Yana Kasova of the Bulgarian Athletics Federation)
