The President of the Bulgarian Shooting Union and member of the IOC Public Affairs and Corporate Communications Commission Vessela Letcheva commented on the performance of the Bulgarian athletes in Paris. She was a special guest in Bulgarian National Television.
“Shooting is in the top 5 as a medal winner for Bulgaria at the Olympic Games with a bright presence of many of our famous athletes. Antoaneta Kostadinova is a silver medallist from Tokyo. In Paris, in her crown discipline of 25m pistol, she made her best result of the season. Antoaneta was healing an injury for a long time. We didn’t mention this problem because we didn’t want to make excuses in advance or look for reasons outside ourselves. But if we have to analyze the result, it was her strongest shooting in a year. And even though she was focused and acted extremely responsible for this competition, she couldn’t compete for a medal and finished 11th. The scores of the other competitors were very strong. Our other representative Kiril Kirov, who took a medal at the World Championships last year, failed to do well in her Olympic debut. However, he made a huge effort in preparation, as well as in winning the Olympic quota,” commented Vessela Lecheva.
Vessela Letcheva believes that if we do not invest in training facilities, our athletes will not have a chance to be on the same level as their competitors.
“The National Shooting Sports Complex, which will soon be officially opened, will enable normal training of Bulgarian shooters. The state invested funds, which was necessary because we see that the development of the sport is going at an incredible pace and we cannot compete with the rest of the world with outdated and unfit facilities,” Letcheva said, adding that after the Olympic Games a professional and careful analysis of the overall performance of Bulgarian athletes should be made.
