The echo of the beating of the waves resonates under the immense glass roof of the Teremky swimming pool, in the suburbs of kyiv. From the top of the ten-meter diving board flanked by the Ukrainian flag, Oleksiy Sereda draws a blank. Inhale, exhale. He rushes forward, four pike rotations, then cuts through the chlorinated water with grace. For the young 18-year-old diving prodigy, competing for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, remaining focused on his figures throughout training is a feat, while his country has been suffering for more than two years from the invasion of Russian army. At any moment, an enemy missile or drone could explode on the capital.
If the Ukrainians respect the air alerts with less and less assiduity, the diving team does not take any risks, under a fragile glass roof which would shatter at the slightest impact. At each siren, several times a day, Oleksiy must interrupt his training, run to the shelters and wait for it to pass. This is the daily life of Ukrainian athletes, for whom the Olympic truce, the end of conflicts during the competition requested by a UN resolution, remains a Greek myth. They do not forget that in February 2022, Moscow launched its attack against Ukraine between the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in China.
“I’m afraid it will happen again to us”
Between two dives, Oleksiy regularly glances at his phone. The youngest European champion in his discipline follows the air alerts in Mykolaiv, his hometown. His parents and sister still live in this city in southern Ukraine, 50 kilometers from Kherson. Until the liberation of the regional capital in November 2022, Mykolaiv lived under Russian fire. A shell fell on Oleksiy’s house, damaging the roof and the second floor. “My father has almost finished repairing everything but even today, even in training, I worry first and foremost about them, I’m afraid that things will happen again at home,” breathes the young man, who tries to “do the best we can under these conditions”.
Tamara Tokmatchova, her trainer, corrects the diver’s aerial movements from the edge of the pool or in the adjacent room full of trampolines. “Athletes’ training and sleep are constantly interrupted by alerts and bombings. Not only does their preparation, which is difficult to plan, suffer; but also their moral and psychological state,” regrets this 61-year-old former gymnast, who fled Luhansk, in Donbass, in 2014. Not to mention that three members of the supervisory team joined the Ukrainian army. Added to this is the fact that athletes take several days to travel to competitions abroad, as the airspace is closed. But, for Oleksiy, there is no question of giving up on his dream. “If I win an Olympic medal, in synchronized or individual, I would be doing my country a great service, because many people would hear good things about Ukraine,” explains the young man, who intends to prove that an athlete “can win a medal, even if his country is at war.”
More than 350 sports infrastructures destroyed in Ukraine
At the start of the invasion, when Russian tanks stopped on the outskirts of the capital, the Ukrainian diving team took refuge in Germany for several months, before returning home. But some athletes continue to train abroad due to lack of equipment. Stadiums, swimming pools, velodromes, ice rinks: as of October 1, 2023, nearly 351 sports infrastructures have been damaged by the war, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, destruction estimated at 228 million euros. “Ukrainian athletes cannot compete fairly while Russia destroys our training facilities,” the Ukrainian government said on X. “This is why all Russian athletes must be banned from the Olympics.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky, and 30 other Western countries including the United Kingdom and the United States, had called for their complete disqualification after the invasion. But in December 2023, after months of delay, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decided otherwise. Russians and Belarusians will be allowed to compete under a neutral banner – without flags, anthems or national colors – provided they have not actively supported the invasion. They will not be allowed to participate in the opening ceremony. And no official from the two countries will be invited to Paris. Around 36 Russians should participate in the Olympic fortnight, “according to the most likely scenario”, estimates the IOC – compared to 330 in Tokyo, in 2021. While around a hundred Ukrainian athletes are expected in Paris.
If in diving, the Russians did not obtain their qualification for the Games, in judo, Ukrainian athletes risk finding themselves facing their Russian opponents. “Even if they are “neutral”, everyone knows that they represent Russia,” squeaks judoka Yelyzaveta Lytvynenko, from the Kontcha Zaspa Olympic training center, founded under the USSR, on the outskirts of the capital , and which you reach after passing a checkpoint. “They should not have the right to be on the tatami with us because they train in good conditions, without missiles flying above their heads, everything is fine for them, their families are safe, not like ours”, annoys this 20-year-old champion, stretching. A few months ago, she found herself very close to a bombing, at the bus station in Dnipro, where she lives. His parents, refugees in Poland, lived in a village located on the right bank of the Dnieper, regularly bombed from the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, occupied by the Russians. Elizaveta returns there from time to time to check that the family house is still intact.
“A real pride in representing Ukraine”
“On the one hand, the war tires the athletes, but, at the same time, they have never been so motivated to win”, affirms Vitaliy Doubrova, his coach, while around sixty judokas train in the huge dojo in the center. “Patriotism was not so important to them before the invasion, but now they feel real pride in representing Ukraine. Several have even sewn the Ukrainian flag on their kimonos,” explains the forty-year-old. Like the rest of Ukrainians, the athletes were hit hard by the war. Some lost their homes, others saw their hometown occupied, still others went to the front. And then there are all those who are no longer there: the more than 400 athletes or coaches killed since the start of the invasion, according to the Ministry of Youth and Sports.
Among them, the name of Stanislav Houlenkov, a regular at the Kontcha Zaspa dojo, is on the lips of all judokas. At 22, the European junior champion left the tatamis for the trenches on February 24, 2022. For ten months, Stanislav was missing after a mission near Avdiïvka, in Donbass, before his body was identified a few weeks ago. “He could have trained here like me, participated in competitions, in the Olympics perhaps, if it had not been for the Russian invasion,” breathes, moved, Bogdan Iadov, 27 years old, champion of Europe 2022 in judo and favorite in his category for Paris.
“War does not stop on the battlefield, of course sport is political. When one country attacks another, its athletes become propaganda tools, even under neutral status,” says Vitaliy Doubrova. In 2008, the president of the International Judo Federation, Marius Vizer, appointed a judoka friend as honorary president of the organization: a certain Vladimir Putin. The title was stripped from him in 2022, and Marius Vizer resigned. But tensions are higher than ever: there is no doubt that Ukrainian athletes will fight the fight of their lives on the tatami mats.
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