Just as the labour market has been constantly ruing the lack of qualified people in 2008, Bulgarian sport showed, with a few exceptions that it is still the "old guard" that has to defend the country's sporting fame.

The year was very promising in providing plenty of opportunities for sporting success, with the highlight being the Beijing Summer Olympics. Unfortunately, Bulgaria failed to qualify for the Uefa European football championship in Switzerland and Austria and the only thing Bulgarian football fans could do was to wait and see whether Dimitar Berbatov would finally make it to Manchester United from Tottenham Hotspur, a story that made headlines for almost the entire year.

The Olympics
Sadly, the other stories that made headlines in 2008 were about doping and Bulgarian athletes.

It all started in early February when it became clear that two of Bulgaria's most successful athletes would miss the Olympics because of a doping scandal. European women's 400-metres champion Vanya Stambolova and high jump silver medallist Venelina Veneva heard the news on February 5, after they lost their appeal against a two-year doping ban. The Court of Arbitration for Sport concluded that the two athletes had tested positive for the male sex hormone testosterone, or its precursors, in Budapest in January 2007. In February 2007, Veneva once again tested positive, that time in Sofia.

The next blow to Bulgaria's Olympic hopes came in June, just weeks before the start of the Games. All 11 members of the Bulgarian national weightlifting team gave positive doping tests, seemingly caught red-handed by doping cops. Judging by the lack of proper reaction from the Bulgarian Weightlifting Federation, it was obvious that no one had anticipated such an outcome.

Never in Bulgaria's sporting history had so many athletes who train together been tested positive for illegal substances. And, as in previous cases, all that federation officials could come up with was a conspiracy theory. This led to the resignation of the head coach who apparently decided to save money from the team's budget allocated by the federation and buy cheaper medicaments. The result was that Bulgaria travelled to the Olympics without its biggest hopes for gold medals. Without its weightlifters, all eyes were set on Bulgaria's volleyball team - which had been experiencing one of its best years with captain Plamen Konstantinov as the star - and Rumyana Neikova who took part in the rowing event.

Unfortunately, internal quarrels within the Bulgarian Volleyball Federation (BVF) took their toll on the team and the Olympics ended without a medal. Bulgaria only reached the quarter-final stage. Konstantinov missed the team's first four matches in Beijing after a test taken during preparations in South Korea allegedly showed a high testosterone level. His bid to be re-tested in Beijing was denied, prompting him to leave the Olympic village. Speculation in Bulgarian media laid the blame at the feet of Dancho Lazarov, BVF president, who was the one to order that Konstantinov be kept out of the team's matches. After the games Konstantinov's test proved negative, but the damage was done.

Veteran Neikova, on the other hand, managed to keep her focus and deliver Bulgaria's only gold medal at the games. In total, the country won five medals: one gold, one silver and three bronze medals, the worst medal count since 1956.

Football
Ever since 1994, when Bulgaria won fourth place in the Fifa World Cup, Bulgarians have had great expectations for their team. With the Euro 2008 out of the picture, all hopes were directed to the qualifying rounds for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. The year started with the appointment of Plamen Markov as head coach. He was the last coach to have led the team to a major football event (Euro 2004 in Portugal) and he was expected to do the trick again with the support of Dimitar Berbatov.

Markov's problem was that, in 2008, he had pretty much the same team he had in 2004, with few young players to count on. The poor start to the qualifying rounds in September showed that this was not going to be enough for the team to qualify and after the devastating loss against Serbia (6-1) in a November friendly, Markov was sacked without winning a single game scoring only draws.

On the domestic football front, the news in 2008 was not the record-high championship title of CSKA Sofia football club, but the lost licence to play in Uefa's tournaments over unpaid obligations to the state. The whole of June was occupied by protests from CSKA fans against president Alexander Tomov, who was blamed for the club's problems. The latter blamed it all on a conspiracy against CSKA. He claimed that there was nothing exceptional about CSKA's finances and even filed a lawsuit against the Bulgarian Football Union (BFU) in the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne.

Next to that, there was a rebellion by a group of former referees against their superior, Borislav Alexandrov, accusing him of corruption and match fixing. It was the first time that referees were willing to openly discuss match fixing in Bulgaria. Alexandrov was dismissed from the BFU and is currently awaiting trial based on a tape having him and one referee discussing fixing matches. All these scandals, and the early exit of Bulgarian football clubs from Uefa's tournament, meant that the only positive football news was Dimitar Berbatov's transfer from Tottenham to Manchester United for the record high fee of 30.75 million pounds.

Another noteworthy event in 2008 was Bulgaria's expressed desire to host the 2020 Uefa European football championship together with Romania. This ambitious plan was soon followed by Bulgarian Motorcycling Federation's idea for Bulgaria to host a round of Formula One championship.

Tennis and sumo
The pride and joy of Bulgaria in 2008 surprisingly involved sumo and tennis. Kotooshu Katsunori, born in Bulgaria as Kaloyan Stefanov Mahlyanov, became the first European to win the Prestigious Emperor's Cup at the Summer Grand Sumo Tournament in Japan on May 24. The 25-year-old was ranked as ozeki, or "champion", the second-highest level in the sumo ranking system, behind only yokozuna. The "David Beckham of sumo", as Japanese media refers to him, was the source of much pride in Bulgaria, the same as the country's biggest young hope: tennis player Grigor Dimitrov.

After years of trying, Bulgarian tennis finally landed a trophy at the most prestigious tennis tournaments in the world - Wimbledon - after Dimitrov won the junior boys singles final on July 6. His next triumph was the junior title at the US Open, which made sport commentators compare him to Roger Federer.