The European Shooting Championship in Arnhem, the Netherlands has brought joy and satisfaction to Bulgarian fans of the sport. Anton Rizov showed incredible performance and deservingly won the gold medal in the 10m rifle event.  This has been the biggest success so far in his career and the first title in the history of Bulgarian men's rifle shooting. At a press conference in relation to the success in Arnhem, Coach Vesselin Petkov revealed details of the preparation for the competition.

"The great results of Rizov came ahead of the championship. In three consecutive days just before the tournament Anton reached the world’s top - 60 consecutive air rifle shots in the 10-point circle. This caused joy, but also worries because it was important for him to preserve peak shape for the competition and show the best of himself."

Among the women Antoaneta Boneva became European vice-champion in the 10 m pistol event. In the final she lost the gold to Olympic champion from Ukraine Olena Kostevych.

"I am happy with the championship and the results. Of course, better performance is always possible. I am not competing against others but against myself and I want to see the maximum of what I can do. I do not want to rely on old glory but I want to be better every time,” Antoaneta Boneva says.

At the meeting with media it became clear that a year and a half since the head of the Bulgarian Shooting Union became two-times Olympic champion Maria Grozdeva, relations in the organization have improved and problems of the past were gone. However, financial problems continue to plague the sport.

"Our sport is among the top six when the number of Olympic medals of Bulgaria is taken into consideration; yet we do not have national sport facilities,” says Hristo Marinov, coach of Antoaneta Boneva.

It was pointed out the old illegitimate leadership of the organization holds in stock electronic targets of over 500 thousand euro bought by the State for the needs of the national team, who a re forced to train with paper targets, which have not been used in the world for 20 years. Without their own training base, Bulgarian shooters rely exclusively on the Ministry of Interior for their preparation. Valeri Grigorov of the board of directors of the shooting union told us more about the absurd situation related to financing the sport:

"According to the criteria of the Ministry of Youth and Sports, shooting is a second-class sport, although we are among the top 6 in the medal chart. In order to be first-class sport and have financing for 25 shooters we need to have 50 shooting clubs. How can we have 50 shooting clubs? Is this sport so popular? Each shooting club requires security, special storage conditions for the rifles and so on. It is one thing to store 50 basketballs and another to have 50 guns.”

Mr. Grigorov pointed out that the Union has already had meetings with the Minister of Sports Krassen Kralev, who expressed understanding and willingness to help. At the press conference it became clear that without the support of a large pharmaceutical company there would have been no Bulgarian participation in the European Championship in the Netherlands. After the latest success shooters started preparation for the World Cup in Korea in April, which give opportunities for quotas for the Olympic Games in Rio.

English: Alexander Markov