Bulgaria Ski discussion board

Got back late last night from Borovets. Booked 14th-21st in the Bor. I went with low expectations but was pleasantly surprised. A few irksome, little things but nothing too drastic... That is until mid-week and seeing not 1 but 3 ski instructors from the Champonia ski school dragging a man down a slope, face down in the snow, by his snowboard for about 100 yards. Then kicking & punching him before kicking his sister who tried to intervene! All 3 instructors were easily half the age of the couple & twice the size! All this because the novice of 3 days had bailed too close to their slalom course. A slalom course, by the way, set up along a nursery blue slope! The guy went to the police with the various bits of footage & photos that myself & other witnesses had, only to have it all turned around by the 'respected locals'... This experience left a bitter taste in my mouth & subsequently tarnished the rest of my holiday. Oh & the 'respected locals' also threatened to smash my camera & "break my ugly face" but only after it was obvious I was on my own, (I was waiting at the bottom to film mates coming down the slope). I had read some real horror stories about the resort before going & really wasn't looking forward to it. I was wrong to start with, the place felt amazing! Great conditions with enough variety to keep me amused for hours daily. Then all this agro. I will never return there now! Shame because the place is nice. I saw & spoke to many people that morning who'd witnessed it all, most of them novices themselves & too petrified to go down the slope until the instructors had left... NONE of them willing to ever return & all feeling their holiday had been ruined. The instructors are nothing more than crude bullies who should've been banned from the slopes but as we all know it's not going to happen. I feel sorry for the next poor victim that gets assaulted by these thugs....

Having spent several hours reporting this attack on myself and my sister to the police we did not get a great deal of help from them apart from having both parties being warned to keep away from each other for the rest of the week.

It was also denied that this had ever happened in the resort before but as suspected this was not the case but people were not prepared to speak out I was told by the instructor who had given lessons to me earlier in the week that his brother had also been threatened by these people in the last few weeks.

I have no doubt in my mind that these people and this incident do not represent the locals in Borovets all of whom I found to be very genuine and pleasant people.

I strongly believe that the locals and the Resort Director are the ones who should also stand up against allowing that sort of behaviour in their resort as it will inevitably damage their tourism trade.

The 3 thugs involved were from SKI-CLUB \"CHAMKORIA\"
The club is registered in the National register of Republic of Bulgaria and is a full member of the Bulgarian Ski Federation. There are four trainers working in the club - Alexander Markov, Georgi Madjarski, Zaharin Grivev and Radoslav Simeonov.

The club website can be found at www.chamkoria.org

i am very surprised to hear this, as i know them very well, i wasnt there so cant actually comment, but what i would say is that Chamkoria are a training club for racers, and they try to cause as little inconvenience to other slope users as possible, not always something that works vice versa. Did these people think that they were perfectly entitled to get stuck into the slalom course??? which is dangerous in itself when you dont know what your doing, and bear in mind you have children 6-18 practising for a lot of races going full pelt down these courses and then someone thinks its smart to .have a go. them selves with no consideration for the kids. Ive been there and ive had to give first aid to someone who thought it a good idea to have a go, and got smashed in the face by a pole. I wont condon this but knowing Zaki and Radi im certain that there was an element of danger being caused to children that they are responsible for if they reacted like that. Its true the slopes are for everyone, but their needs to be a sense of resposibility, if you see a team practising (nearly always at the side of the slope) stay away and let them get on with it. Sorry your holiday was spoilt, but what do you think would have happened if you went to the local council field and started kicking a ball around on a pitch during football match??

The Chamkoria ski club is a small club from Samokov. It is run on a non-profit basis for the benefit of the kids in the Samokov area. The organisers are primarily family people from Samokov. It would be very surprising to see them involved in something like this. Could it be possible that the person was physically man-handled off the salom course purely for the purposes of his own safety or the safety of people coming down the salom course. Then perhaps the person overreacting to the man handling which would have been done purely out of safety concerns. I don't want to doubt your report but of all the people in the resort the Chamkoria club seem the least likely to be involved in anything like this.