2024-05-01 06:07:44
Ioana Ilieva, who won Bulgaria’s first and only quota for the fencing tournament at the Olympic Games in Paris this summer, told what it cost her.
“After the bronze medal at the world championships last year, I thought qualifying for the Olympics would be a lot easier than it turned out to be. I had a lot of stress on myself. It affected my health – physically and mentally.
This success means a lot to me. Over the past year, we have put in incredible work – not only me, but also the entire national team, the entire Etropolski Academy, the entire federation. We believed that this qualification for the Olympic Games would happen.
Because of one point, we did not manage to qualify as a team, which affected me extremely hard. In the last month I needed a lot of steady nerves to accept it and to be able to prepare for this qualification. It was very difficult because only one takes a quota. I was number 1 on the start list as I’m ranked eighth in the world and it was really bad knowing that if I lost any of my matches I wouldn’t qualify.
Thanks to everyone who is here around me. They helped me a lot – physically, mentally and provided me with incredible conditions for training. Without them, I wouldn’t have been able to give my all on the trail,” said 22-year-old Ilieva at a press conference.