Valeria Miladinova: “I could miss my birthday, but I will not miss a competition”

“I can see a huge difference since 2021,” says defender Valeria Miladinova, who found the big event drew people who did not know the sport, either at all or very well. “You turn these people into a huge group of friends, or a fan club. It's a very nice thing because we had never had this experience before.

“You get this connection with so many people — it doesn't matter if it’s working staff, or it’s some of the fans or the public or different teams. And, you know, you can also show it to the little ones. I think the bigger part in Bulgarian handball is to show the upcoming generation, like 10 or 12 years old, how much support you're getting from handball.” 

Miladinova is well-placed to speak of the benefits of the sport, crediting it with so much of what she now holds dear in her life away from the court. 

“I will always be grateful to handball,” she says from a hotel balcony in Poland, where she is on a layover between flights. Miladinova is a senior flight attendant with Electra Airways, and was able to obtain her education in the field due to an indoor handball scholarship at a university in Cyprus, following a year playing abroad in Belgium. Balancing work and handball is not easy, but Miladinova — and her employers and co-workers — knows where her priorities lie. 

“I was 13 years old when I first went to one competition in Spain,” continues Miladinova. “This was the first time that I was able to practice some kind of language. And for me, this is also how I got so in love with learning different languages and travelling.

“I get to meet, for example, 100 people a day — new people all the time. You're changing crews, you're changing captains, you're changing other officers, you're changing the environment. Today I'm in Poland, but tomorrow, I'll be in Morocco. I get to work with a lot of nationalities. We have people from Brazil, we have people from Iceland, and everyone knows me as a handball girl in the company. 

“Yesterday, one of the captains asked me, ‘did you go today for your run? And after that, I see that you're doing jumps outside.’ It's like, yes, I am doing it every single day because I'm preparing for the European Championship.”

Miladinova sees many parallels in the team environment required in both sport and her profession. The squad that will take to the sand in Alanya has been together for some time, with the home EHF Beach Handball EURO 2021 marking the start of their journey. 

“We first came together in 2021, for the first European Championship that Varna was hosting,” says Miladinova, outlining how it was their first major competition as a national team. Prior to 2021, the Bulgaria women’s side had played the EHF Beach Handball EURO in 2006 and 2007, as well as the World Championship in 2006, where they obtained their so-far best result in any tournament: fourth place. 

Speaking of the 2021 experience, Miladinova says: “As I remember, we were able just to win [against] two teams, but lots of our opponents had been training together for so long and they were so strong. We were able to be playing on their level, which for me was a super good experience and we were able to learn a lot of things from them.”

With the YAC17 EHF Beach Handball EURO held immediately prior to the senior event, Bulgaria had four teams preparing for the summer of 2021 together. 

“It was super nice because the whole four teams were able to gather together,” recalls Miladinova. “We were getting to know each other. We were always playing as opponents before, and now we were playing together in one team, when our goal was, of course, to win the game. I remember it was a very good experience for the first time.”

Having been together since 2021, and with all of the players also crossing paths in the indoor national team, the Bulgaria women’s side are a team in every sense. “It's like a whole little family situation, let’s say,” says Miladinova.

“We don't have players who are playing only beach handball and some players who are playing only indoor handball. All of us are playing indoor and beach handball at the same time.”

The community around the beach handball teams, and in handball in general, might be close-knit — and have grown since the summer of 2021 — but Miladinova finds that the sport can still fly a little under the radar in Bulgaria. 

“But it doesn't stop us from giving motivation because, you know, when you play with the heart, you play for your country, you play for your relatives, and, of course, you play for yourself and for the girls in the team, it doesn't actually matter what kind of strong support you're getting. It's important how you feel about that,” she says. 

Bulgaria will come up against some tough opponents in the preliminary round in Alanya. Playing in group A, they will take on back-to-back EURO and world title winners Germany, regular medal contenders Denmark, and a country with a big beach handball culture, Poland. 

“I can say that these are very good opponents,” says Miladinova. “They’re also very prepared ones.”

Considering the recent achievements of Germany and Denmark, with the latter having taken the silver medal at the EURO in 2021 and reaching the semi-finals at the World Championship in 2024, Miladinova sees the match against Poland as the biggest opportunity for her side. 

“Poland is maybe the opponent that we have to go over and after that, it's going to be, for me and for the team, a little bit more challenging, but I believe if we give our best of course nothing is unbeatable,” says Miladinova. “I hope that we're going to be able to keep the pace.

“It's important for us to keep the strength of the attack, and also in the defence, and to be fast. This is the idea — to be fast.”

Alongside the aspect of performing to the team’s best, Miladinova simply looks forward to competing when the EHF Beach Handball EURO 2025 throws off on 8 July. 

“My mind was currently, before, into the work in aviation,” she says at the conclusion of the interview. “Now it's back again to handball, I have this huge smile on my face. I cannot wait for the upcoming July.”

Photos © kolektiff (main & in-text), MSV Photographers (celebration photo), Florian Voigt (second picture)