Bulgaria has been regularly winning medals at the Summer Olympic Games since 1952. The first native athlete to return with bronze from the Helsinki Games was boxer Boris Georgiev. Olympic champion in rowing from Montreal in 1976, Zdravka Yordanova, did not make a forecast about the number of medals from the current games in the French capital, as so far we have been pleasantly surprised with a greater number of medals than predicted.

• Forecast predicts nine medals for Bulgaria from Paris

The person who ignited the spark of passion for rowing in Zdravka Yordanova is former sailor Stefan Stoykov. Yordanova participated in national championships and in the first year she won the championship for girls and second place in a team of four. In 1976, women's rowing entered the Olympic program for the first time in the Canadian city of Montreal.

• Bulgarian Olympic Glory – Rowing

In a special interview for Radio Bulgaria Zdravka Yordanova told us about her personal memories of the preparation, about the competition in a team with Svetla Otsetova, which took place on July 24, 1976, about winning the gold medal and what happened afterwards.

"It's was a crazy year. I spent 10 months preparing, with no opportunities for anything else but for achieving my goal. And finally, when it happened, my first feeling was of a very hard job that's been done well. And then I happened to realise what really happened. We often talk about how the Queen had to stand up and applaud the Bulgarian team. The boat of Great Britain was in 12th position. After the end of the competition an ovation tour is made in order of the ranking and she stood on her feet in the stands and applauded Bulgaria and our team."

Canada gave each participant in the Olympics a maple tree, which Zdravka did not take home and now regrets it, as it would have been a wonderful symbol and a memory of the achievement. However, there is a memorial park built around the Olympic Stadium in Montreal. She found this out years later when she travelled there again to show her son the place where she became a champion:

"On some huge copper plates the names of all the champions of that Olympic Games are written. Of course, my name is among them. I have relatives who live there and they sent me a picture with the text that when they get sad, they go there to touch my name and get energized."

"In our country people claim that we are of great value, that we are heroes and so on, but no one thinks about the historical memory," Zdravka Yordanova says with bitterness and adds that this trip, as well as many others, in which she sees similar parks of the Olympic glory, provoke her desire for a similar place in our country, from which we can learn more about our sports stars of different generations, who have reached the highest distinction for an athlete - the Olympic medal:

"My original idea was for this to happen between the National Stadium and the Ministry of Sports, as some kind of a connection. An alley exists and I personally imagined that there would be something like a small square down by the stadium and some kind of pedestal on which the Olympic fire can be placed. Ceremonies of the Olympic delegation could be held there. I think the construction of such an alley is simply a must."

The specified place does not require any infrastructural changes, since the alley will not be on the roadway, but on the existing sidewalk.

• Remembering the Olympics with love and pride

Publication in English: Al. Markov

Photos: BGNES, National Museum of Sports, personal archive of Zdravka Yordanova