Photo: Facebook/DPS-Shumen Region.
On October 25, horse races will be held at the Shumen Hippodrome as part of the national championship. The event is organized by the municipality of Shumen and the state-owned enterprise Kabiyuk, and will be opened with a speech by Shumen Mayor Hristo Hristov. This is stated in the official invitation published on the municipality’s website.
Surprisingly, however, it turned out that some of the prizes in the national derby are named after “New Beginning,” the party of politician Delian Peevski, who has been sanctioned for corruption by the US and the UK.
“Grand Novoto Nachalo Prize,” “Grand Novoto Nachalo Prize,” and “Grand Republican Derby – Novoto Nachalo Prize” are three of the seven races in the competition. The races and the prize fund for each of them are published on the Facebook page of the DPS-Shumen Region with the traditional message of Peevski’s party:
“The best is yet to come!”
Unlike the three “new beginnings,” only one of the races bears the name “Republic of Bulgaria,” even though the competition is part of a national circuit and is organized on state-owned land.
The other three races are “Bulgarian Rose Prize,” “Stallion Moment Prize,” and “Ivan Ivanov Prize” (named after a former trainer who received the award posthumously). All races have a prize fund of BGN 3,000, except for the “New Beginning Derby,” which has a prize fund of BGN 5,000.
Long-time employees of the stud farm are angry about the introduction of politics into horse racing.
“This is a state-owned enterprise, and the municipality of Shumen is a co-organizer, so what are political parties doing in the races?” ask people involved in equestrian sports indignantly. They point out that traditionally, races have been announced as first station, second station, and so on.
The organizers wash their hands of it
How the New Beginning took over half of the races in the Shumen derby turned out to be a mystery even to the organizers themselves.
The Shumen municipality learned about the New Beginning prizes from questions asked by a reporter from Za Istinata and were genuinely puzzled.
The director of the state-owned enterprise Kabiyuk, Martin Marinov, also expressed bewilderment at first and assumed that the “New Start” had been introduced into the derby by the municipality.
Later, however, the head of the stud farm had several conversations with his colleagues at the stud farm and gave another explanation for the situation.
According to Marinov, the entire technical organization of the derby was entrusted to a group of private individuals, and Kabiyuk only provided the venue for the competition.
“Since there is no association to back such a big competition, several well-known horse breeders and trainers in the industry took the initiative to organize the derby,” Marinov said, naming horse breeders from the Shumen, Razgrad, and Ruse regions as the technical organizers.
The director of Kabiyuk explained that he did not know how the initiators had determined the prizes for the various races.
“As owners of the property, we only provide the venue for the race. How they solved the problem, I don’t know, they negotiated with the sponsors,” Marinov said, but commented that it was a “sensitive issue” to politicize horse racing, “not only for this party, but for any party.”
“We are only hosts, we have no involvement in the matter, we don’t even have the funds for prizes,” the head of Kabiyuk emphasized several times, pointing out that the announcement for the races included contact details for one of the organizers—Levent Nezirov, a farmer, horse breeder, and one of the most prominent trainers from the village of Sevar in Kubrat.
However, Martin Marinov defended the organizers, saying that “the derby is the most anticipated competition in this sport” and “they obviously sponsored their own expenses.”
“Kabiuk is an icon in horse breeding, so when they (the initiators) came to me with the idea of using the field for the derby, we accepted. The municipality of Shumen was asked to help with the cleaning, and the mayor also responded.
Such a competition has not been held in Shumen for a long time, perhaps over 20 years, and I was happy that such a derby would happen after so many years, and that the enterprise did not allocate funds for this,” said the director of Kabiyuk.
The municipality of Shumen categorically denied having anything to do with the “New Beginning” in the races.
“The municipality of Shumen responded to the request of the DP “Kabiyuk” to support the initiative to hold a derby for racehorses at the Hippodrome in Shumen on October 25 with readiness. The request from the State Enterprise was received on October 6 and it concerns assistance in 4 areas – cleaning and removal of waste, provision of a grandstand, chemical toilets and an ambulance with medical assistance,” the municipality said in response to a question about their participation in the derby.
The city hall points out that the municipal teams have cleared the terrain at the Hippodrome, removed the waste and provided the requested logistical support so that the organizers from “Kabiyuk” could welcome the participants.
“The municipality also provides a stage, as well as technical resources for the program outside the sports part of the tournament. All this would not be possible if it did not have the status of a co-organizer. However, the sports and technical conduct of the competition itself, including rounds, prizes, participants, categories, etc., are beyond the competence of the Shumen Municipality,” the Shumen city hall emphasized in response.
“New Beginning” entered the races from Deliorman
The fact is that from this year “New Beginning” entered the horse races in Shumen region.
Initially, the prize appeared in races in the northern municipalities, known as Deliorman, where kushies are a favorite pastime among the local people. At the fair in the Kaolinovo village of Kliment on August 3, the biggest race was the “DPS-New Beginning Prize”.
The village festival is traditionally organized by the Kaolinovo municipality with large horse races and folk fights, and gathers hundreds of people from the region.
This summer, the fair in the village of Kliment became a rostrum for the elite of “DPS-New Beginning” and brought together deputies and mayors from Peevski’s party. The host of the event, the mayor of Kaolinovo Nida Ahmedov, who is deputy Chairman of “DPS-New Beginning”, sat on specially erected podiums in the office of MP Hamid Hamid, the regional chairmen of the party in Shumen and Razgrad, the mayors of the New Beginning in Venets Nehriban Ahmedova, in Nikola Kozlevo Ismail Ibryam and in Loznitsa Sevgin Shukri, the deputy mayor of the Shumen municipality Beynur Ahmed, who is also the municipal chairman of the DPS-NN, the deputy mayors of Razgrad Habibe
Rasim and Novi Pazar Sevdzhan Alieva, the chairman of the DPS in Hitrino Sevdzhan Akif, who is also the manager of the NOI – Shumen, as well as Milen Polimenov, a member of the Board of Directors of the state stud farm “Kabiyuk”.
The gathering in one place of so many rulers from state institutions and municipalities showed the local people how successful Delyan Peevski’s party is, despite the sanctions of the USA and Great Britain.
Three months earlier, some of the guests also attended horse races in the Kubrat village of Sevar, on the occasion of the village holiday on May 3. The municipal administration in Kubrat reported that:
“Among the guests of the event were prominent figures from political and local life. The MP and Deputy Chairman of the DPS–“New Beginning”, Hamid Hamid, was also present, as was the mayor of the Kaolinovo municipality, Nida Ahmedov. MP Aysel
Mustafova, the regional chairman of the MRF-“New Beginning”, Arif Vasvi, and the mayor of the Kubrat municipality, Alkin Nebi, were also among the guests of honor.
Meanwhile, the MRF-New Beginning also entered the government of Shumen, after the municipal party leader Beynur Ahmed was appointed deputy mayor for budget and finance of the regional center on June 1, 2025.
Those familiar with the personnel quadrilles in Shumen predict that after the New Beginning also appears in Kabiyuk, this means that there will be no change of director. In August 2025, the government increased the Management Board of “Kabiyuk” from 3 to 5 people. The decision was made at a cabinet meeting on August 13, but to this day the composition of the board of directors at the stud farm has not been changed.
Currently, the board of directors includes Martin Marinov (director), Zlatka Vazelova and Milen Polimenov.
There was a lot of talk among Shumen residents that the former mayor and current deputy and regional chairman of GERB Lyubomir Hristov wanted to get his people on the board of Kabiyuk. According to GERB activists, “now the stud farm is under the influence of Ilter Beizatov, with whom Hristov has been in conflict for years, and Beizatov has also apparently started working for Peevski.” In order to “restore” the balance in the management coalition at the stud farm, Lyubomir Hristov wanted to propose his loyal party members to the board of directors, one of whom could become director.
To date, however, there have been no new appointments to the board of directors of Kabiyuk, nor has there been a change of director.
And long-time GERB staff comment that the new situation shows the true balance of power. “GERB runs the country, why isn’t there a GERB race at the state stud farm?” party activists ask and call on “Lyubo Hristov to take over and “sent an invitation to Boyko Borisov to come to the derby and see who ate what from the party”…
