Bulgarian snowboarder Alexandra Zhekova has earned medals in the two starts in the bordercross discipline at the World Snowboarding Cup held in the Swiss ski center Veysonnaz. In the first race, Zhekova finished second and took the third place in the second race. The victory went to the triple world champion Lindsey Jacobellis (USA), who demonstrated an excellent shape and won all three races this season. Canadian Dominique Maltais took the bronze in the first race and the silver in the second race. After the first three races of the season, the temporary standings in Women’s World Snowboard Cup are topped by Lindsay Jacobellis (USA) with a total of 3,000 points, followed by Canada’s Dominique Maltais – 2,200 points and Alexandra Jekova is third with 1,800 points.
At the World Biathlon Cup in Antholz (Italy), Bulgarian biathletes Krassimir Anev and Michael Klecherov had a very strong performance in the 10 km sprint. They finished 17th and 18th respectively, as Klecherov had clean shooting and Anev had one miss. Sweden’s Fredrik Lindström recorded the first World Cup victory of his career, second went to Evgeniy Garanichev of Russia and the third went to another clean shooter, Martin Fourcade of France.
At the Swimming Tournament in Barcelona, Bulgaria’s Ekaterina Avramova set a new national record for yet another time. In the 200 meters backstroke event, she finished first by clocking a marvellous time of 2:11,13 min, which is nearly two seconds better than her previous record. As a reminder, in 2011 Avramova improved all previous records in Bulgaria in backstroke at 50 and 25 meters. So far, at the tournament in Barcelona, in addition to the two gold medals at 100 and 200m backstroke, Avramova took two silver medals - in the relays at 4x100m freestyle and 4x200 meters style freestyle.
At the finals of the 15-day New Year’s Grand Sumo Tournament in Tokyo, Bulgarian sumo wrestler Kaloyan Mahlyanov, aka Kotooshu, was defeated by ozeki Kisenosato. Thus, Mahlyanov finished the tournament with a total of 10 wins and 5 losses and was 8th in the final standings. Estonian ozeki Baruto, who earned his first Emperor's First in his career, conceded only one defeat in the tournament in the last round. He lost to Mongolia’s grand champion Hakuho on Sunday's final day of competition and finished with a total of 14 wins and 1 loss. Kaloyan Mahlyanov contributed to the title of Baruto as in an earlier match he defeated Hakuho. Another Bulgarian sumo wrestler Daniel Ivanov – Aoiyama had a rather successful debut at the tournament, finishing with 6 wins and 9 losses.
Top Bulgarian tennis players Grigor Dimitrov and Tsvetana Pironkova ended their participation in the first Grand Slam tournament of the year - the Australian Open. Both reached the second round of the tournament. 20-year-old Dimitrov lost to 10 seed Nicolas Almagro of Spain with 2:3 (6:4, 3:6, 7:6, 4:6, 0:6) after three and a half hours of play. Bulgaria's number one in women’s tennis,Tsvetana Pironkova, dropped out of the tournament after losing 0:2 (4:6, 4:6) to Galina Voskoboeva of Kazakhstan.
Former world chess champion Veselin Topalov played in a draw with Armenian grandmaster Levon Aronian in a game of the 8th round of the 74th Tata Steel Chess tournament in the Dutch town Wijk aan Zee. So far, Bulgarian Topalov has a total of 3.5 points from 7 draws and one loss and shares the 9th place in the temporary standings with Gata Kamsky and Karyakin. The temporary leaders are Aronian and Norwegian Magnus Carlsen, who have 5.5 points each. In the 9th round, Veselin Topalov will play with the American chess grandmaster of Japanese origin, Hikaru Nakamura.
Translated by Rossitsa Petcova
