Biography
Stanka Zlateva grew up in an athletic family. Her original mentor was her older brother by 8 years who also was a wrestling champ and had earned medals in high school tournaments. He trained the young Stanka in different sports from age of 10. He admits that his sister's progress in sports surprised him to the extent that shortly wrestling with his younger sister became a difficult challenge and served as a great training for him. By the time she was 12, she was able to pin her brother in a matter of seconds in wrestling matches. Despite his brothers wish for his own training goals, she was no longer interested in westling her 20 year old brother. In an informal wrestling match, when she was 13she competed against the local 17 year old male wrestling champion in the province of Sliven in Bulgaria. She pinned him two minutes after the start of the match. This event resulted public's attention for young Zlateva wrestling skills. Subsequently in 1997 at age 14, she formally got engaged in wrestling training by a professional coach, Demir Demirev and subsequently she was trained by Valeri Raychev in the Kyustendil sports club and in the national team, as well as with Ognyan Raychev in the national team. Since 2006, she has been competing for Levski Sofia, where her coach is former world champion and triple European champion Simeon Shterev.
In late 2010, it was revealed that Zlateva had been offered to compete for Azerbaijan at the 2012 Olympics, but had steadfastly refused to discuss any such possibility with the Azeris, as she would only be willing to represent Bulgaria. She had previously turned down similar attempts by Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to encourage a nationality switch.
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