“I’m here to talk about my medals, or this interview is over.” The strong man across the table stands his ground firmly while looking at me in the eyes, the muscles in his arms standing out under the fit white t-shirt. But I’m not afraid. I know that if he ever tries something the prison guards, standing next to us, would intervene.

This is a radical change of environment for him. Galabin Boevski was used to being interviewed in stadiums and cheered by enthusiastic crowds. As a weightlifter for Bulgaria, his home country, he not only won the gold medal in the 2000 Sydney Olympics, but he also set a new world record for his category, lifting almost 200 kg in the throwing phase.

Eleven years later, he visited Brazil with his daughter, a tennis athlete. Everything went well until the police caught him at the airport. In his suitcase, 9 kilos of cocaine. He was arrested, judged, sentenced and sent to a state prison near São Paulo.

Two years after that incident, it was hard to get to Boevski. First, weeks of considerable paperwork and bureaucracy. Then the travel to a nearby city in the countryside of São Paulo. Inside the prison came the metal detectors, the search, and the rules. I had to change my pants because the two metal buttons in my jeans were making the detector beep. I was searched by a female officer who also had to stay present while I changed clothes. I also couldn’t record anything and was allowed only a pen and paper. All of this to arrive at this interview with a reluctant Boevski.

And he only speaks Bulgarian.

Of course, I have a translator by my side. But instead of serving as a neutral medium to our conversation, she is taking his side. And he isn’t exactly cooperative. He even feels offended when I ask if his prison mates admire him for what he has accomplished. He refuses to talk about the prison as if we could ignore the very walls and guards around us.

He also refused to have his photo taken, despite having agreed to it beforehand and the fact that we had brought the director of photography himself to take the image. So we had to spend some 10 minutes pumping his ego up to get the photo done.

Since Boevski only wants to focus on his achievements, I start asking him about his childhood, his prizes, and the feeling of being on the top of the Olympic podium. At that moment, his voice changes. “There are no words to describe it. It is the top of the career of any athlete, the top of emotion”.

I had 2 hours with him, but the interview only lasted 40 minutes, since I couldn’t get anything else out of him. I left feeling defeated. Some years later I was interviewed by the author Ognian Georgiev, who wrote a book about Boevski’s life. I told him point blank: it was the worst interviewing experience of my career.

Despite the feat of having gained access to him (something that even high-profile journalists weren’t able to do), the memory of this story is bittersweet for me. I feel like if I had been more prepared for the possibility of his large ego I could have approached the whole thing differently and made him talk more.

But then again, everything looks easier in retrospect.

The lowest moment of Boevski’s life was supposed to last until 2020, when his sentence would end, despite the efforts of his lawyers to get him back to Bulgaria. But one month after the story’s publication, in 2013, the former weightlifter was extradited to his home country. Until today, nobody knows why.

This post is a shortened adapted translation of the original story, published in August 2013 in the IstoÉ 2016 Magazine. The original can be found here (in Portuguese).