Grozdeva, Maria

Maria Grozdeva started shooting sports at the age of 11 with coach Valentin Andreev. At the age of fourteen fulfilled the standard of the master of sports in shooting. For most of her career, Valery Grigorov, who became her husband and father of three children, was Grozdeva’s personal trainer.

At the Olympics, the Bulgarian athlete made her debut in 1992 in Barcelona and immediately won bronze in an air pistol shooting. Four years later, she repeated this success at the Atlanta Olympics .

In 2000, Grozdeva won a pistol shooting competition at a distance of 25 meters, and in Athens she defended her title, simultaneously updating the Olympic record and becoming the first athlete to defend a champion title in this discipline. In addition to gold, in 2004, the Bulgarian athlete won her third bronze award in air pistol shooting. In addition to medal success at the 2004 Games , Grozdeva was chosen as the standard-bearer of the Bulgarian national team at the opening ceremony.

At the Olympics in Beijing, she tried to defend the championship title a second time, but took only fifth place , and in the shooting from an air pistol she was unable to break even the top ten. In London, she was unable to reach the final in both disciplines, although in shooting from a conventional pistol she stopped a step away from the final, becoming the ninth and losing in a shootout for getting into the final eight.

During her career, she became the champion of Europe seven times, but at the world championships the success of the Bulgarian athlete was not accompanied. There, she only made her way to the final twice: in 1994 she took the seventh place in air pistol shooting, and in 2002 she was fourth in a conventional pistol shooting.

• Maria Grozdeva - Olympic statistics on Sports-Reference.com (Eng.)
• Profile on ISSF website