Ivan Nikolov Abadzhiev ( February 12, 1932 , Novi Pazar , Bulgaria - March 24, 2017 , Germany ) - Bulgarian weightlifter and weightlifting coach, silver medalist at the World Championships (1957) , participant in the Olympic Games (1956, 1960). Honored Master of Sports of Bulgaria (1957). The head coach of the national teams of Bulgaria (1969-1989, 1997-2000) and Turkey (1995-1996). Under his leadership, athletes of these countries became Olympic champions 12 times and won world championships 57 times [2] .
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Biography
Ivan Abadzhiev was born on February 12, 1932 in the city of Novi Pazar. In childhood, he was fond of gymnastics , but then decided to switch to weightlifting. Since 1953 he trained independently according to his own methodology. In 1956, he was 7th at the Olympics in Melbourne . In 1957, in Tehran, he won the first ever weightlifting championship medal in the history of Bulgaria. After taking the 12th place at the Olympic Games in Rome in 1960, he decided to end his sports career and switched to coaching.
At first he worked as a state weightlifting coach at the Bulgarian Sports Committee, and in 1969 he was appointed head coach of the national team. From that moment, the results of Bulgarian athletes at international competitions began to improve rapidly. In just a few years, the team, which usually did not claim medals of the largest tournaments, turned into the main rival of the USSR national team, which then dominated the world weightlifting. Already at the Olympic Games in Munich (1972), Bulgarian athletes won three gold medals and took first place in the team event. In the future, the Bulgarian team repeatedly managed to surpass the Soviet team at the largest world and European tournaments.
Despite all these successes, Abadzhiev’s coaching activities caused a mixed reaction in the sports world. Although he himself explained the sharp increase in the results of his students by a special system of intensive training, the time spent by Abadzhiev as head coach of the Bulgarian national team was overshadowed by several high-profile doping scandals. In 1976, at the Montreal Olympics , where doping control was first introduced, Bulgarian athletes and Valentin Hristov were convicted of using illegal drugs and were deprived of medals. In 1988, and who showed the best results in their weight categories at the Olympic Games in Seoul, were also disqualified and deprived of gold medals when the prohibited diuretic Furosemide was found in their doping tests. The disqualification of Grablev and Genchev was followed by the demarche of the Bulgarian delegation, which removed five athletes who had not yet performed from the competition.
Subsequently, Abadzhiev claimed that he did not give his students any illegal drugs, and called the disqualification of his charges in Seoul the initiative of Soviet sports officials who were interested in eliminating the strong competitors of their athletes [3] .
In 1989, Abadzhiev resigned as head coach of the Bulgarian national team and for some time stepped down from coaching, but in 1995 accepted the offer of his former student Naim Suleymanoglu to head the coaching staff of the Turkish national team. Under his leadership at the Olympic Games in Atlanta, the team of this country won two gold medals (in addition to Suleimanoglu, another former member of the Bulgarian team Khalil Mutlu won the Olympic gold). In 1997-2000, Abadzhiev was again the head coach of the Bulgarian national team (since 1998, not only male but also female). However, at the Sydney Olympics, she again faced disqualifications due to doping. The champion ( ), as well as two winners of the Games ( Ivan Ivanov and ) were convicted of using illegal drugs and were deprived of their rewards. After that, Abadzhiev completed his coaching career.
He spent the last years of his life in Germany . He died on March 24, 2017. He was buried in Sofia [4] .