The 66^th edition of the traditional Strandja International Boxing Tournament for amateurs this year marked a great interest, also being a checkpoint before the start of the Baku 2015 European Games in June. The tournament is the oldest one in Europe and has been taking place since 1950. The first international presence at the event was marked in 1964. The Strandja Cup is the most prestigious award for Bulgarian amateur boxing today. The competition is really respected and is known as a “global boxing mini-championship” worldwide. Representatives of the strongest boxing schools take part in it traditionally.

Some 221 male and female boxers from 35 countries took part in the competition this year. The program was expanded from 4 to 5 days due to this record number of participants. Bulgaria scored a total of 4 gold medals. Simeon Chamov /up to 69 kg cat./ raised the so wanted Strandja Cup with men, for a first time in his career. The boy was last year’s champ, who won on points at the final versus Yaroslav Samofalov from Ukraine. Chamov’s right hand had even undergone surgery in December. Radoslav Panteleev won the title in the up to 81 kg category, as his rival in the final match – Elshod Rasulov from Uzbekistan failed to appear between the ropes due to an injury. The Bulgarians also grabbed 6 bronze medals. The rest of the gold was shared between Uzbekistan /5 medals/, Azerbaijan /2 medals/ and Kazakhstan /1 medal/. Lorenzo Sotomayor /Azerbaijan/, a champion in the up to 64 kg category was proclaimed first runner-up to the Strandja Cup winner, while winner at the 91 kg category Kamchybek Kunkabayev remained the second runner-up.

As far as women were concerned, the Strandja Cup went to the first woman – world champion in boxing from Korea 2014, Stanimira Petrova /54 kg/, after a fight with 5-times champion of the USA Christina Cruz. Stanimira, literally dancing once again – her trademark now, jumped from taekwon-do to boxing only a couple of years ago. “I was myself at the ring today, as I see boxing as fun and I had fun today. I was calm and relaxed and things happened,” the champ said after her triumph. European champ Stoika Petrova won versus Chinese Ren Cancan in the up to 51 kg category. Svetlana Kamenova /60 kg/ won silver, while Gabriela Dimitrova /54 kg/ and Denitsa Eliseeva /60 kg/ took bronze medals. Thus Bulgaria was outlined as boxing power No 1 at women. “The Bulgarian presence was of a high quality, but women really outran men a bit this time. These are our Amazon girls – the female warriors we are proud of,” said President of the Bulgarian Boxing Federation Krasimir Ininski after the competition. Mira Potkonen /60 kg/ from Finland, Agnes Alexiusson /64 kg/ from Sweden and Chinese Li Qian /75 kg/ also took gold from the Strandja tournament. Potkonen became the first runner-up to our Stanimira, while Alexiusson remained the second one.

That was how the Strandja International Boxing Tournament ended up and Sofia now waits for the European Men’s Boxing Championship that will be held in August this year.

English version: Zhivko Stanchev