The Mini Olympics Challenge
For the first time ever, AUBG’s club Olympics organized an event they called the “Mini Olympics Challenge”. The event was part of the Olympics’ “Challenging Wednesdays” series and took place on Nov. 27 at 7:30 p.m. in the ABF Sports Hall. For almost two hours, participants competed in several activities, including basketball free throws, running with obstacles, sprint runs, push-ups for boys, sit-ups for girls, long jumps and darts.
The athletes were required to go through each of the disciplines in order to be part of the ranking. In the boys’ group, Lucherzar Valev ranked first, Georgi Staykov and Sven Bögel ranked second and third, respectively. For the girls, Kalina Decheva took the first place. Yoanna Dimitrova was second and Daria Naidenova- third.
Basketball and darts were the activities people enjoyed most, according to Olympics member Vladimir Chanov. Before the start of the event, people were mostly trying out these two activities, and even after the end, they continued to practice their skills.
Chanov says that the idea for the Mini Olympics came from last year’s Ninja Challenge. “Every year we want to try something different from the usual challenges such as volleyball, basketball, dodgeball. He says this would bring together many people to test their skills in different disciplines. The idea was to choose activities which were very diverse, because everyone is good at different types of sports.
Organizing this event took longer than the Olympics’ regular challenges, because it combines several sports. “We think about every challenge week for week,” says Chanov, “But this particular challenge we started thinking about before our first challenge, because there are details that need to be considered to make the participants’ experience as positive as possible.” He says that what makes this event special is that it’s strictly individual, unlike most of the events the Olympics organize.
When asked if the Mini Olympics will become an annual event, Chanov says that, like most of the more experimental events they organize, it will not. However, he says that they can implement parts of the challenge into future events. “Each year, we try to come up with something new that the students will like and make them relax after a hard day,” says Chanov, “Therefore, these types of events are experimental and one-off.”
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Mihaela Miteva is a Journalism and Mass Communication student at AUBG. She is very competitive and enjoys watching sports events.
