Vlad was born in 1984 so lived for a few years under the old system ( before the wall came down ).
He was a boxer in Bulgaria and currently appears to be about 5-8, 150 pounds.
He was not aware of how good Bulgaria was in olympic lifting, nor did he know who Naim Sulemainov(old name)
or Ivan Abadjiev were. I showed him a print out from Wikipedia about Naim and now he says he vaguely
remembers hearing about him.
He said the main reason most kids go to various sports schools is because they do poorly in school. That did
not compute with what I'd heard about the Communist Bloc sporting system.
He said that Bulgarian boxers trained with weights and that he used steroids. Not sure if all the boxers use
steroids there, but he acted like it was not unusual.
The number one thing that surprised me was his relative indifference to olympic lifting. What else is Bulgaria
known for?
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