2024-10-01 13:58:03
Stanislav Mitkov won the silver medal after six tough battles, Erika Karabeleva finished fifth
The successes achieved by the Bulgarian taekwondo players continue with full force. Kimia Alizadeh’s medal at the Paris Olympics has inspired our native athletes, who now go to competitions with one and only one goal, to win a gold medal. Another historic medal for Bulgaria was won by Stanislav Mitkov in cat. up to 63 kg. at the World Youth Championships held in Chungchan, Korea. A record number of 129 countries and over 1,700 competitors are participating in the race.
Slavi played six fights to win the silver medal. he started his journey after an emphatic 2:0 success (13:0, 12:0) against Ali Kanara from the UAE. In his second match, the Bulgarian prevailed with a 2:1 victory over Beket Bolatulu from Kazakhstan. In the third fight, Mitkov again showed an incredible game, which brought him success with 2:0 (13:2, 7:1) against the Japanese Izumi. In the quarter-final, Slavi gave absolutely no chances to the representative of France, winning again with 2:0 (5:0, 8:0). Thus, our boy went to the semi-finals, where his opponent was the strong taekwondo player from Azerbaijan, Vasif Salikov. In his fifth meeting of the day, Stanislav showed real spirit for a victory, which he won with 2:0 (8:0, 13:1). Thus, Mitkov qualified for the historic first final of the World Youth Championship for Bulgaria. There, his opponent was the Korean Jung. Despite the great desire for victory and self-giving, Stanislav eventually won the first silver medal for Bulgaria.
Our other representative today was Erika Karabeleva in cat. up to 52 kg. She also had a great start to her performance, defeating Moulad Shanid from Morocco 2:0 (12:0, 13:6). In the next round, Erika faced Yu Xuan Yang from Taipei, but here too she had no problem winning with 2:0 (9:0, 5:4). Thus, Karabeleva qualified for the quarterfinals, where she faced Sude Uzunchavdar from Turkey. Despite the excellent game, in the end Erika could not eliminate her opponent, but with her game she showed that she is one of the future medalists for Bulgaria. She placed 5th in the final standings. The coach of both our national teams, who are competitors of TK “Achilles”, is Vencislav Sokolov. The preparation of Stanislav and Erika before the world championship was led by the head coach of the national team, Farzad Zolkhadri.
After the first day, Bulgaria is in third place in the general ranking, where the leader is Iran, in second place is Korea, and in third place are Bulgaria, Kazakhstan and China. Close to the team since the first day in Korea is the chairman of BFT Slavi Binev, who is in Korea in the capacity of first vice president of the European Taekwondo Union and Director of Kukion, took part in a number of important meetings together with all the world heads of the international federation.