Inside Ukraine’s ministry of youth and sports stands a solemn memorial, displayed along a section of wall, displaying the names of athletes and coaches at various levels who have died during Russia’s full-scale invasion. It was unveiled in May; around 500 are listed and the awful truth is that, as the country’s army continues to defend against relentless attack, the list is likely to grow before any resolution is reached.
So the sportspeople who represent Ukraine at Paris 2024 are the lucky ones, if anyone from a country experiencing such horrors can in any way be described thus. The reality is that each of them carries more on his or her shoulders than the vast majority of their competitors could ever imagine. There is no opportunity like an Olympics to test yourself and chase your dreams; this summer they must attempt that while embodying a nation’s fight for survival in front of the world and offering a hint of escapism for those putting lives on the line back home.
Then there are the personal stories each one of them can tell, because none of the delegation’s lives have been untouched. On Friday afternoon five of Ukraine’s 140-strong team, the smallest they have ever sent to a Games, joined the national Olympic committee president, Vadym Huttsait, in outlining the extraordinary individual and collective effort it has taken to be in competitive shape for what should be a career highlight.
On one side sat Olha Kharlan, the fencer who hit headlines last year when she was disqualified from the world championships for not shaking her Russian opponent’s hand. Kharlan can compete here because the IOC president, Thomas Bach, intervened to guarantee her place; were that not enough she has to worry, constantly, about her family back home in the southern city Mykolaiv.
It was the 18-year-old diver Oleksiy Sereda, also from Mykolaiv and a sensation when becoming the youngest ever European 10m champion in 2019, who spelt out with obvious emotion the load he must bear. “Preparing was very stressful for me,” he says. “Hearing the air alarms, over and over, and going down into the basement. I’m stressing not only about training but also my relatives.
“My father is in the military. I want to call him but often can’t get through, he’s always busy and it makes my competition hard, I’m worrying about him. He’s 53. Before the war he and my mother had a business making furniture in Ukraine. But then everything changed for me, for him, for all of us. He has to do his work and I have to do mine.”
Speaking in Kyiv two months ago, the Ukraine acting sports minister, Matviy Bidnyi, acknowledged that all their representatives will participate under severe mental strain. “Psychological preparedness is an important consideration for our athletes,” he said. “All of us are under constant strain. We’ve got used to it but it’s influenced us a great deal. It should be taken into account.”
Bidnyi gave his own example of the deep-rooted scars left by sirens, missiles and the constant threat of danger. “It’s impossible to understand until you’ve felt it yourself,” he said. “When I first travelled during the war, to the Invictus Games in Germany last year, when I heard a plane touching down I had the feeling to throw my body to the ground.”
The obstacles will be impossible to forget when Andriy Protsenko, a high jumper, begins his competition on 7 August. Protsenko had enjoyed serviceable training conditions until Russia invaded, at which point he spent 40 days under occupation near his home city of Kherson. He used self-made equipment to keep himself in shape; eventually he was able to leave and, less than five months later, won a remarkable world championship bronze in Eugene.
Nobody should be surprised, then, that Ukraine’s slogan for Paris 2024 is “Will to win”. A resounding medal tally might be a secondary consideration but podium places will offer a powerful means of representation and Ukrainians should be standing on plenty of them. Yaroslava Mahuchikh, the world champion high jumper and newly crowned record holder, should be compelling viewing. Mykhailo Romanchuk, a freestyle swimmer who held court alongside Kharlan, Sereda and company, won two bronzes in Tokyo and may improve on that. His wife, Maryna Bekh-Romanchuk, looks well placed to go strongly in the triple jump.
There are plenty of others, including the precocious Sereda, who should be in the mix. This is a team that has dispersed across Europe over the past two and a half years, many leaving Ukraine to base themselves abroad. More than 500 of the country’s sports facilities have been destroyed or damaged by war including the “Meteor” pool in Dnipro, where the highly rated backstroke specialist Oleksandr Zheltyakov still trained until the eve of the Games.
Russian and Belarusian athletes, 31 of whom are to compete under a neutral flag, will be ignored if the parties cross paths in the Olympic Village or elsewhere. “For us they don’t exist,” Huttsait says. “We don’t greet them, we don’t say hello, we don’t even look at them.” The swimming pool is one of the few areas where direct sporting confrontation is possible.
Inside Ukraine’s accommodation in Paris, drawings and messages from children keep the mood light while reminding their contingent of the impact they can have on a generation that continues to lose so much. “This Olympics is going to be much harder,” says Sereda, who competed in Tokyo aged 15. “I feel not only responsibility to myself but to my parents, my family, my country.” Ukraine are here and nobody can doubt their will at all.
