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WITH its 27th place finish at the 1999 World Championships, the Bulgarian women's team was nowhere near qualifying to the 2000 Olympics. Four years later, the team is enjoying a resurgence thanks to Georgy Videnov, a former men's coach who took over the role of women's head coach after Sydney.
The departure of expert coaches in the past decade had depleted the program, so Videnov recruited 1996 Russian Olympian Yevgenia Kuznetsova to help revive the team, which climbed to 14th at the '01 worlds. Last summer, a semi-retired Viktoria Karpenko of Ukraine joined Kuznetsova in Sofia. Eyeing a top-12 finish at the '03 worlds, the ambitious Videnov is hoping to acquire yet another top-level gymnast from Ukraine or Russia.
Now training alongside world and Olympic medalists, native daughter Nikolina Tankusheva is watching-and learning-from their experience as she pursues her own dreams. At the 2002 worlds, she made history as the first woman to vault a Scherbo (roundoff full-twist on, full-twisting layout Tsukahara-off)...