📅 ON THIS DAY IN BULGARIA, Friday 23 October
Atanas Komshev won an Olympic gold medal in 1988 and died six years later. His name is on a sports hall, a wrestling club and a national trophy, and today would have been his 67th birthday.
What happened on this day
Atanas Komshev (English Wikipedia's page title spells it Komchev) was born on 23 October 1959 in the village of Devetintsi, in the Burgas area, about 20 km from Karnobat. The village was called Dokuzek, from the Turkish word for nine, until it was renamed in 1934; it had 575 people in 1946 and, by current statistics, 27 in 2021. He trained Greco-Roman wrestling at the Stefan Karadzha Sports School in Haskovo under coach Ivan Kostov Kostadinov and wrestled for CSKA. Bulgarian Wikipedia credits him with world silvers in 1982, 1983 and 1984, world bronzes in 1985 and 1987 and European titles in 1984 and 1986, before the peak: the 1988 Seoul Games, where he won Olympic gold in the 90 kg class. Wrestling is to Bulgaria roughly what rowing is to Britain: a discipline it keeps winning in. The event was held at the Sangmu Gymnasium in Seongnam, with the wrestlers split into two groups, each decided by double elimination, and English Wikipedia's final standings list Harri Koskela of Finland and Vladimir Popov of the Soviet Union behind him. Bulgaria finished those Games fifth on the medal table with 35 medals, back at the Summer Games after the 1984 boycott.
On 2 November 1994 he was travelling from Sofia to Varna in a Saab driven by a friend when, 16 km before Veliko Tarnovo, the car hit a truck loaded with bricks at the Pushevo junction. After two brain operations, in Veliko Tarnovo and Sofia, he died on 12 November 1994, aged 35. Karnobat's sports hall and its wrestling club, Olimpiets-Atanas Komshev, carry his name, the team trophy at the national wrestling championship is named for him, and a memorial plaque is fixed to the Haskovo sports school building.
Why this matters for British expats
English Wikipedia says wrestling and weightlifting are Bulgaria's top medal-producing Olympic sports. The way Komshev is remembered also shows how a sporting hero is honoured here: not with one statue but with a hall, a club, a trophy and a plaque, in the places tied to his life. If you spot a sports hall named after someone as you drive around, it is worth asking who. No Shumen connection turns up in the record, so this one is cultural literacy rather than local pride; our Shumen guide is the better place for that.
Sources and further reading
This piece draws on the Bulgarian Wikipedia entry on Atanas Komshev, read alongside the English entry and the pages on the 90 kg event at the 1988 Games, Bulgaria at those Games, Bulgaria at the Olympics and the village of Devetintsi. The English page spells his name Komchev in its title and Komshev in its text, and the two pages give different patronymics, so I have left the patronymic out.