2024-02-17 07:20:39
Yuliana Yaneva won a bronze medal in the women’s 72 kg category at the European Wrestling Championships in Bucharest (Romania), bringing the number of medals for the national team to seven. Earlier in the day, Evelina Nikolova took silver at 57, and all other medals are bronze.
Yaneva took third without a fight after her opponent Anastasia Alpeyeva of Ukraine was injured.
“I’m sorry that the fight didn’t take place, but these are things that don’t depend on me and they exist in sports. I wish my rival a speedy recovery,” Yaneva said.
“This year, the European championship was very strong, even in the non-Olympic categories. A good balance of competitors of all weights was found. I personally made a small mistake and did some things wrong. However, in the last two weeks I was very sick and that was my the current opportunities. My coach and I even discussed whether to wrestle and in the end we decided that it was a necessary experience”.
Yaneva changed the category for this tournament, but will return to the Olympic 68 kg for the “Dan Kolov – Nikola Petrov” tournament, which is next month.
“We are looking to participate in every competition, although we were on the scales specifically for this. However, experience prevailed. Competition breeds champions, and she has already shown what she is capable of at 68 kg,” said her coach Serafim Burzakov.