Vasilena Nakova

Happy birthday to Bulgaria’s 400m hurdler Vasilena Nakova, who set a personal best and won a national title on the same weekend last month.

At the Bulgarian National Championships at the Vasil Levski Stadium in Sofia in late July, Vasilena ran 1:03.23 in the 400m hurdles — a personal best, at the national championships, which is where every athlete would choose to run one. On the same day she ran a leg for the Athletic Sofia quartet that won the national 4x400m relay title in 3:53.12. A personal best and a national title inside twenty-four hours is a very good weekend by any measure.

Her flat 400m best stands at 57.67 from the National Sports Academy track, and she has run 3:40.14 in the mixed 4x400m indoors at Festivalna. Sofia is her whole competitive world — Vasil Levski, the NSA, Festivalna, the Asics Arena — and she has been putting up personal bests across all of them.

The 400m hurdles asks for something that no other event does. You have to hold a stride pattern for a full lap while your legs stop cooperating, and every hurdler will tell you the race is decided somewhere around the eighth barrier, when the count you have carried since the gun starts falling apart and you have to decide whether to chop or reach. Getting faster at that distance is never about fitness alone. It means somebody has rebuilt the pattern and she has done the work to hold it under pressure.

Честит рожден ден, Василена! Да си жива и здрава, и да ти се сбъдват всички мечти — и още много бързи обиколки. Наздраве за рожденичката! 🎂🎁🎉🫶🫶🇧🇬