Bulgaria
2018

One Bar From Gold in Berlin

Bulgaria sent 14 athletes — seven men, seven women — to the European Championships in Berlin in August 2018, and the medal that came back was decided at 2.00 metres on the evening of 10 August. Mirela Demireva cleared it, equalling the best jump of her life. So did Mariya Lasitskene, competing as an Authorised Neutral Athlete rather than for Russia. The countback went to Lasitskene, who had missed less on the way up, and Demireva took silver — her second consecutive European silver after Amsterdam 2016. Marie-Laurence Jungfleisch of Germany was third at 1.96.

The silver did not stand alone. Three more Bulgarian women finished inside the top six in Berlin: Gabriela Petrova was sixth in the triple jump at 14.26, Radoslava Mavrodieva sixth in the shot put at 18.03, and Ivet Lalova-Collio — at 34, in her fourteenth season as an international sprinter — fifth in the 200 metres final in 22.82. Four top-six finishes from a squad of fourteen, and every one of them a woman.

From this season · in the archiveAsics Bulgaria International Team Pro Elite 2018 Women Booty Short TightsWomen's team-issue booty short tights from the Bulgarian international squad's 2018 season — the racing cut worn under national kit the summer Demireva jumped 2.00.80,00 €View piece →

The Year in Five Heights

Demireva's 2018 is best read as five heights. Sixth at the World Indoors in Birmingham in March at 1.89. Then, on 10 June in Stockholm, over 2.00 for the first time in her career, at 28, in her twelfth season — second on the night. Gold at the Balkan Championships in Stara Zagora in July at 1.95, jumping at home. The 2.00 again in the Berlin final in August, this time worth silver. And a season that ended with no valid mark at the Diamond League final in Zürich, where the winning height was three centimetres lower than her summer best.

The pattern in those five stops is the story. Lasitskene entered four of them and won all four — Birmingham, Stockholm, Berlin, Zürich — and Demireva's only victory of the year came at the one meeting the neutral athlete skipped. There is no shame in that ordering: in 2018 Lasitskene was mid-way through a streak that had her clearing two metres more often than the rest of the world combined. But it means Demireva's best year — two clearances of 2.00, a continental silver — ran its whole length under the same shadow.

The Rest of the Team

The season had opened indoors. Four Bulgarians went to the World Indoor Championships in Birmingham in March: Demireva sixth in the high jump at 1.89, Tihomir Ivanov ninth at 2.20, Petrova eleventh in the triple jump at 13.91 and Mavrodieva fifteenth in the shot at 16.33. At the Balkan Indoor Championships in Istanbul in February, Bulgaria had finished third in the medal table with three golds, from Petrova, Mavrodieva and the long jumper Milena Mitkova.

In July the Balkan outdoor championships came to Bulgaria itself — 610 athletes from 18 countries at the Beroe Stadium in Stara Zagora — and the hosts took five golds: Demireva's 1.95, a sprint double from Inna Eftimova, Mitko Tsenov's steeplechase in 8:45.50, and a shot put title that mattered beyond the meet — Mavrodieva's 18.95, still the best outdoor put of her life. Seven months later she converted that form into European indoor gold in Glasgow.

The loudest Bulgarian result of 2018, though, came from a 16-year-old. Aleksandra Nacheva won the world under-20 triple jump title in Tampere on 15 July with 14.18 — at that point the longest jump by any woman in the world that year, at any age — and added the Youth Olympic title in Buenos Aires in October. She had also been in Berlin with the seniors, aged 16, going out in qualification. Injury would interrupt the career later, but the arc resumed: fourth at the European Championships in Rome in 2024 with a 14.35 personal best.

The Asics Bulgaria Kit

The three Bulgarian pieces in this archive are all women's kit, all labelled 2018, all Asics: a team polo, a crop top and booty short tights issued to the Bulgarian international team that season. That is exactly how we date them — from the garments themselves. Team kit from federations this size is issued in tiny quantities and almost never reaches the resale market, which is what makes a season set of three matching pieces unusual to hold.

Asics Bulgaria 2018 · in the archiveAsics Bulgaria International Team Pro Elite 2018 Women Crop TopThe matching Asics crop top from the same team allocation — federation lettering, athlete sizing, and a season set that rarely survives intact.90,00 €View piece →

The frame around the season is the one every Bulgarian high jump story sits in. Stefka Kostadinova's 2.09 from Rome in 1987 was the world record for 37 years, until Yaroslava Mahuchikh cleared 2.10 in July 2024 — and Kostadinova's Olympic gold in Atlanta 1996 remains the summit of the national sport. Demireva, silver in Rio and silver in Berlin, is the closest heir that tradition has produced. The full arc is in our history of athletics in Bulgaria.