Olympic Games 2024: who will represent Ukraine at the most important sporting event of the year
Kyiv • UNN
On July 26, the Olympic Games will start in Paris, where 140 Ukrainian athletes will represent the country. Despite the war, they are ready to fight for victory, and the stories of many are impressive.
The Summer Olympic Games in Paris will start on July 26, 2024, where 140 Ukrainian athletes will compete for victory. UNN has prepared stories of athletes who, despite the war and training difficulties, will represent Ukraine at the Olympic Games.
The 2024 Summer Olympic Games will last until August 11.
This time, the opening ceremony will not take place in a stadium, but on the River Seine, which the Parisian authorities specially cleaned for this event. Delegations from participating countries will sail on separate boats. The 6 km route will run along the city streets to the Trocadéro square, where the solemn part will take place. This is the first time the Olympic Games opening ceremony has been held on water.
There will be 140 Ukrainian athletes at the games.
Sport and War
Among the track and field athletes, Ukraine will be represented by Anna Ryzhykova from Dnipro, whose mentor, coach Valentyn Voznyuk, who headed the Dnipropetrovsk sports school, died from a Russian missile.
"He was always a very cheerful, happy person who did everything to make children come, rejoice, and stay," Ryzhykova recalls.
Ukrainian boxer, Honored Coach of Ukraine Mykhailo Korenovskyi, also died from the same missile.
Athlete Kateryna Tabashnyk (high jump) suffered an irreparable loss from the war - in August 2022, her mother died as a result of artillery shelling of Kharkiv. Tabashnyk dedicated the bronze medal she won in the high jump at the European Athletics Indoor Championships-2023 to her mother.
But high jumper Andriy Protsenko from Kherson region spent a month under occupation. Despite this, the athlete continued training.
"At first, I watched the news and did nothing. But then I realized that I needed to distract myself," says Andriy Protsenko.
Under occupation, Andriy trained in "field" conditions. He independently made sports equipment from improvised means. He leveled a 100-meter track in the garden — he ran there. He made a barbell from wheels, and made hurdles from metal rods, and trained like that.
Olena Kostevych, who has five Olympic medals in shooting and will also compete at the Olympics this year, is from Chernihiv. She met the beginning of the full-scale war at a training camp in Austria. However, her heart and thoughts were in her hometown.
I talked to all my friends and relatives almost every day. When it was possible. The connection was unstable. And for about a week, the connection was very bad. Just when I was at the European Championship, there was no connection, I didn't know what was happening, I only read in the news where this or that bomb fell, I tried to understand from photos where it landed. (...) It was very nervous. Ignorance, when you don't know what's happening. My thoughts were not about the competition at all. All my thoughts were only there. There was such tension that I then came and spent a week recovering. When the connection was restored, when I realized that everything was fine with my relatives. I can share my grief. My mother-in-law could not stand it. She was there all the time. I think these hostilities greatly affected her health. Everyone has their own story. Everyone has their own grief
European champion in diving Oleksiy Sereda lost his home.
"When the war started, a shell hit my house in Mykolaiv. I was lucky because I wasn't there, and my father went to a friend's. If he had been in the house, he would have just died. It's strange and difficult because you can't plan the future, but that's how it is," Sereda said.
Tetiana Sova, one of the Ukrainian wrestlers who will represent Ukraine at the 2024 Olympic Games. Although the athlete is from Poltava region, she will represent Kherson region. The athlete says that the war changed her life.
During this time, my life has changed dramatically. Before, I lived in Brovary, I was married. Now I'm divorced and moved to Lviv. Everything has completely changed for me. I know that the SHVSM base in Kherson, where we constantly stayed, was destroyed. Many acquaintances from there moved to other cities in Ukraine or abroad
For the first time this year, a new sport, "breaking," will be presented at the Olympic Games. Ukraine will also be represented in this sport, as it has won three licenses. One of the three participants was Kateryna Pavlenko from Kharkiv. Before the full-scale war, she lived in the USA.
"I completely lost myself, lost all motivation, unable to see my family, who were in an extremely dangerous situation due to the war, and barely had the opportunity to help them financially. For the same reason, I could not participate in competitions around the world," she wrote on her Instagram.
Anna Ponomarenko and Oleh Kuznetsov also joined the breaking team.
Ukraine has three boxers in the boxing section, one of them is Abduraimov Ayder from Kharkiv, for whom this will be his debut.
"The preparation was difficult. But that's why I'm ready, because it's difficult. There is a saying 'hard in training - easy in battle.' I'm calm. I don't think about it. Maybe it's for now, when I arrive, it will be different, because there is a different atmosphere, but for now it's like that. It's hard to get to the Olympic Games, even harder to win a medal. Not everyone gets it. I think it won't be easy for anyone," Ayder said in an interview with Suspilne.
This year, only Konotop Kamila, a three-time absolute European weightlifting champion representing the Kharkiv region, will represent Ukraine in weightlifting.
She participated in the 2020 Olympic Games, where she entered the top 5.
As for synchronized swimming, sisters Vladyslava and Maryna Aleksiiva from Kharkiv will perform at the Olympic Games. They are multiple world champions and bronze medalists of the Tokyo Olympics in artistic swimming.
"We live in Kharkiv - this is our home. It suffered the most among all other cities in the first days of the war. It was impossible to train, so we, together with the team, decided to go to Italy for six months to continue training," the Aleksiivas say on the telethon.
They say that at first there was no motivation, but after everyone came to their senses and talked to the coach, it was decided to continue training.
"We must represent Ukraine, we have competitions, we must do our job - show that Ukraine exists! Our home was destroyed, the pool was destroyed, and we are without parents," they added.
The swimmers say they have huge anger towards the Russians and sincerely do not understand what they are being "saved" from.
Ukrainian athletes won 9 licenses in diving, among them are army athlete, Honored Master of Sports, multiple champion and medalist of Ukraine Oleh Kolodiy and his wife, European champion in 3-meter springboard diving, Honored Master of Sports of Ukraine - Anna Pysmenska, who will represent Luhansk region. Anna actively opposed the participation of the Russian team in the Olympics.
At the Olympic Games in tennis, Ukraine will also be represented by the world-famous Elina Svitolina - the first racket of Ukraine in tennis.
"You need to give 100% to the work you do every day for professional sports. It's difficult. It's very difficult for all athletes, for each of us, for every Ukrainian. I always remind myself that we have girls and boys who defend our country at the front, it's ten times harder for them. Playing somewhere - it's a chance for me to show myself as a Ukrainian, so that people watch and cheer for me, cheer for Ukraine. Every time I go out, I represent not only myself, but also my country. And it's very important for me to win these small victories, but, probably, they are also big. I want every day to be filled with pleasant moments for our country," Svitolina said in an interview with NV.
Also at the Olympic Games will be Olga Kharlan - a Ukrainian fencer who has won four Olympic medals, 15 World Championship medals, and 20 European Championship medals in her sports career, which is a record for Ukrainian fencers.
In July 2023, Kharlan became the first Ukrainian athlete to face a Russian in a duel. After defeating her opponent, Kharlan refused to shake her hand. This almost cost the Ukrainian athlete her participation in the Olympics.
Also this year, for the first time, the Ukrainian national football team is participating in the Olympic Games. This was achieved based on their performance at the European Youth Championship, where the Ukrainians reached the semifinals.
"For the first time in the entire history of Ukraine's independence, a football team made it to the Olympic Games. We hope that it will be a strong team, because it is very important for us that our clubs give their best football players," says the president of the National Olympic Committee Vadym Guttsait.
The head coach of the football team is Ruslan Rotan. On July 24, Ukraine played its first match against the Iraqi national team - the Ukrainians lost 2:1. In the second and third rounds, our football players will meet the national teams of Morocco and Argentina.
In total, 140 Ukrainian athletes have won 124 licenses to participate in the Olympic Games.
The National Olympic Committee (NOC) approved the composition of the official delegation of Ukraine for the 2024 Olympics, which will take place from July 26 to August 11. A total of 297 people are going to Paris.
These are not only athletes, but also coaches and support staff, including:
- 140 male and female athletes;
- 12 sparring partners and alternative athletes;
- 95 coaches;
- 24 doctors, masseurs, and other specialists;
- 4 drivers;
- 16 members of the staff of the national team of Ukraine;
- 6 specialists in administrative, technical, and equipment support.
The National Olympic Committee determined the composition of the national team based on the recommendations of the national federations of Olympic sports and in accordance with the qualification criteria.
The Ukrainian team has the largest number of representatives from athletics — 25 athletes. The team will also be represented by 18 football players and 9 athletes in disciplines such as diving, rowing, and wrestling.
The full list of the Ukrainian delegation at the 2024 Olympics can be found here.