Charles_Champaud
Charles Champaud
Swiss gymnast
Charles Champaud (Bulgarian: Шарл Шампо), also spelled Sharl Shampov (Шарл Шампов), was a Swiss gymnast. He represented Bulgaria at the First 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens.[1] Champaud competed in the parallel bars, vault, and pommel horse events. Although the rest of his placings in each competition are unknown, he occupies the prestigious fifth place on vault and earned the first two points for Bulgaria.[2]
Champaud was a Swiss national working as a gymnastics teacher at a Sofia high school when he represented Bulgaria at the first modern Olympics.[3] Bulgaria is thus often included in the figure of participating nations.
In Bulgaria, Charles Champaud also played an important role in introducing football to the country and was the person to bring the sport to the capital city of Sofia in 1895 (the first football game in Bulgaria being in Varna in 1894, organized by another Swiss teacher, Georges de Regibus).
