The happy coincidence

There are several sports whose facilities could be designed by only a few people in the world. Among those are golf, where the designers of courses have the status of true celebrities, and rowing. The Bulgarian Svetla Otsetova is a prominent name around the world, exactly for the design of rowing facilities

Text Peter Torniov, Tzvetana Chipkova

The Olympic champion in double sculls in Montreal in 1976 and a world champion from New Zealand in 1978, graduated in architecture in Sofia in the same year she was awarded the Olympic gold medal. She specialized in the design of sports facilities and gradually gained positions in the closed world of people narrowly specialized in rowing canals. She started with briefs which nobody wanted to work on, and after she did well, her services became sought after. Since 1979, she has been a member of the Technical Commission of the International Rowing Federation (FISA), and in 2003 she became Technical Director of FISA. She has designed the rowing canals for the Olympic Games in Barcelona ’92, Atlanta ’96, Sydney 2000, Athens ’04, and Beijing ’08.
“The happy coincidence in my case is that I have been a top-level athlete and only then did I become a functionary, so I know this side of the sport, too, and I have a specialization in sports facilities”, Svetla Otsetova explains. “These three things coincided and gave me the chance to develop. The most important point is that I am a user. I have been a technical delegate in Sydney, Athens, Beijing, that is, every time I see ....

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