The Minister for Youth and Sport visited the national canoeing and kayaking training centre at the Kardzhali Reservoir

On 11 April 2017, Daniela Dasheva, Minister for Youth and Sport in the caretaker government, visited the national canoeing and kayaking training centre at the “Kardzhali” reservoir. The symbolic host of the meeting was Damyan Damyanov, Executive Director of the Bulgarian Sports Totalisator, who is a long-standing canoeing and kayaking coach. He showed Minister Dasheva the refurbished centre, which suffered serious damage during the floods two years ago but has now been fully renovated and is hosting elite athletes for training. As well as the Bulgarian national team, athletes from Belarus, Moldova and Poland come here to train.
In the presence of Georgi Alexandrov, adviser to the President of the Republic of Bulgaria on youth and sport; Plamen Manolov, executive director of the National Sports Centre; and Antoaneta Boeva, director of the “High-Performance Sport” Directorate at the Ministry of Youth and Sport, Antoaneta Boeva, two-time Olympic canoeing champion Nikolay Bukhalov, the Executive Director of the Bulgarian Canoe-Kayak Federation, Evelina Petrova, and the Ministry of Youth and Sport’s chief expert for the regions of Haskovo and Kardzhali, Yanko Yordanov, Prof. Dasheva inspected the accommodation facilities, the sanitary facilities, the sauna, the weight training room, the boat shed and the pontoon on the reservoir.
“Following the refurbishment, the canoe-kayak centre offers excellent facilities. The next step towards bringing it up to world-class standards is to purchase mobile equipment for monitoring sports training. Bulgaria has a very good training methodology and, over the years, we have proven that we can produce champions. However, modern technology is very important and essential for elite athletes“, said Prof. Dasheva.
Minister Dasheva reviewed the training programme for the national junior canoe-kayak team, drawn up by Milko Kazanov, head coach at the Bulgarian Canoe-Kayak Federation and a bronze medallist at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. The hosts assured her that whilst there might be some gaps in their theoretical knowledge, they would make up for them with excellent results in practice.