Bulgarian swimmer Antani Ivanov is banned again for two years for “disrespectful behaviour”

Bulgarian Olympic swimmer Antani IvanovThe dispute with his national federation took another turn earlier this month when World Aquatics confirmed his two-year suspension by the Bulgarian Swimming Federation (BSF) for alleged disrespect towards the organization.

Ivanov, who had already served a two-year ban until October for missing doping tests, is now banned from competing until March 2026. The 24-year-old butterfly specialist believes his punishment is retaliation for speaking out against doping allegations in Bulgarian swimming.

In 2021, three young Bulgarian swimmers claimed that their federation forced them to take pills at a national team training camp, which led to the trio testing positive for stanozolol. At the time, Ivanov told Bulgarian media that he would not train with the national team until the entire coaching staff resigned. Georgi Avramchev is still president of the BSF today.

Ivanov has doubled down on his criticism of the BSF since his previous two-year ban was upheld by the Court of Arbitration for Sport last summer, claiming that the rising Bulgarian star Petar Mitsin took banned substances when he broke the junior world record in the 400-meter freestyle last year.

“The umbrella organization considers the accusations of the competitor of the professional swimming club Cherno More Varna to be unacceptable and aimed at defamation (Antani Ivanov) that the world record holder in the junior 400 m freestyle Petar Mitsin “He achieved his results in 2023 by using substances on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s prohibited list,” the BSF said. “Ivanov provides no evidence to support these allegations.”

In February, Ivanov was reportedly arrested for possessing less than a gram of marijuana. Last year, he told SwimSwam that Bulgaria was “full of corruption” and that he had even received threats from BSF officials.

“If I stop fighting for my rights, our federation will drug people and succeed like at the European Junior Championships, but I am fighting for my voice and my rights because there is corruption in Bulgaria and if you don’t listen and do what they tell you, they will do what they did to me,” Ivanov said. “At the last national championships, just before my main competition, I received death threats from members of the Bulgarian Swimming Federation. They told me that if I stop talking about corruption and the amount of theft, etc., everything will be fine. But if I don’t, then ‘two years of suspension is the least I have to worry about’. That really scared me because I was with my family, my younger sister and my girlfriend and it’s hard to concentrate on swimming.”

Ivanov got his big break as a 17-year-old at the 2017 World Championships, when he broke a national record in the 200m butterfly prelims (1:55.55) before becoming the first Bulgarian swimmer in a decade to reach a world championship final. Later that summer, he won bronze at the 2017 World Junior Championships and reached consecutive 200m butterfly finals at the 2018, 2019 and 2021 World Short Course Championships. Ivanov, who graduated from Virginia Tech in 2022, failed to advance past the prelims at the 2022 World Championships in Budapest, Hungary, finishing 17th in 1:57.00.