From our Olympics correspondent in Paris – Ukrainian swimmer Mykhailo Serbin, who competes in the classification for athletes with the highest level of visual impairment, defended his Tokyo title at Paris’s La Défense Arena on Sunday by winning the S11 men’s 100m backstroke, with his countryman Danylo Chufarov picking up the bronze behind him.
A row of sentinels stands at either end of the pool, a staff held lance-like in their hands. Each ends differently; some are topped by a lump of wadded padding, others a waterproof plastic ball. The sentinels, too, are utterly unalike, each one decked out in the colours of a different country. Each one, known as a "tapper", is here for just one person.
As the swimmers cut towards them through the water, the sentinels lean forward as one, their staffs at the ready. When the swimmers are almost within arms-reach of the wall, the staffs dip down towards the water, brushing the swimmers on their heads, hands, bellies, cheeks. The athletes twist weightlessly in the water, surging away from the unseen wall for their final lap. In this competition, the swimmers are almost completely blind.
Vision-impaired swimmer Mykhailo Serbin became the third Ukrainian athlete to win gold at the 2024 Paralympic Games on Sunday, setting a new world record in the S11 men's 100m backstroke in the capital's cavernous Paris La Défense Arena.
Although he’s only 20 years old, Serbin was already a Paralympic gold medallist, having won first place in the same event at Tokyo at age 17 – the youngest Ukrainian athlete at the Games to walk away with a medal. Speaking to reporters after the race, Serbin was triumphant.
“I feel fantastic, because this is the second victory in the whole Paralympic Games that I’ve seen,” he said.
In the S11 classification, reserved for swimmers with the highest level of visual impairment, athletes have to wear blacked-out goggles to ensure a fair competition. Tappers are mandatory, waiting on either end of the pool to let swimmers know when they're about to run into the wall.
Serbin said the final lap of the race had been a rush.
“It was very difficult, because I didn’t understand how many meters I needed to swim to reach the finish,” he said. “I just knew one thing – I needed to be the first and I needed to do this for myself, for my victory, for my family. That is my motivation.”
Serbin was not the only Ukrainian swimmer to win a medal on Sunday. His countryman Danylo Chufarov finished not long behind him in the same race, picking up the bronze.
Both Yevheneii Bohodaiko and Danylo Semenykhin won bronze as well in the SB6 and SB5 men's 100m breaststroke respectively, with Anna Hontar also placing third in the SB5 women's 100m breaststroke. Both classifications are reserved for athletes with physical impairments including short stature, reduced movement in part of their body or absent limbs.
Although no para athlete's journey to the Games is easy, Serbin's has been more dramatic than most. His local pool in Kharkiv, the city in northeastern Ukraine where he grew up, was destroyed by Russian bombs following the 2022 full-scale invasion of the country.
The second-largest city in the country, Kharkiv and its surrounding regions have endured intense bombardment since the war began. Earlier today, Ukrainian officials said that Russian airstrikes killed 47 people, including five children.
Like many Ukrainian athletes, Serbin was forced to leave his home behind to continue his training, practising alongside his teammates in Kamianske along the Dnipro River.
For Serbin, it's hard to know just how many people back home are paying attention to the Paris Paralympics. His friends, though, would be proud of him if they knew.
“For my friends, I don’t know. I don’t know how many people are watching these Paralympic Games,” he said. “But if they know, they’re happy, because they are happy when I’m happy.”
