Since the International Olympic Committee warned that he plans to readmit Russians and Belarusians as “neutrals” ahead of the Games of paris 2024, a key political-sports conflict was born. so much that Dmytro Kulebathe foreign minister of Ukraine, a country invaded and bombed by Russian troops, was direct: “The IOC minimizes war crimes. Ukrainian athletes continue to die at the hands of Russia.” A shocking fact: there are already 220 Ukrainian athletes and coaches killed in combat or in bombings during the war.
The last of that long list is Volodymyr Androshchuk, a 22-year-old decathlon promise who was Under 20 national champion in 2019, when he set a record for his country in the pole vault of 4.30 meters. She represented Ukraine in several international competitions and was killed during a fight near Bakhmut, a town in the Donetsk region in the south-east of her country.
“Rest in peace, Volodymyr. We are losing the best people,” Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the Interior Minister, wrote on his Twitter account.
Olga SaladukhaOlympic bronze in the triple jump in London 2012, world champion in Daegu 2011 and a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, said that more than 10 athletes serving in the Army recently died near Bakhmut, bringing the total casualties to 220.
Furthermore, he stated that he cannot understand Thomas BachPresident of the IOC, who visited Ukraine and saw the extent of the destruction by Russia, which left some 340 sports infrastructures in ruins.
“Not a single renowned Russian athlete has openly condemned the Russian invasion and the actions of its political leaders. They refrain from expressing their opinions or support the invasion“, sentenced Zhan BeleniukOlympic gold medalist in Tokyo 2020 in Greco-Roman wrestling and deputy in the Ukrainian Parliament.
truncated stories
The first deaths of athletes – the vast majority, amateurs or unknown in the international environment – were confirmed just a week after the war broke out, on February 24 of last year. The football players Vitalii Sapylo y Dmytro Martynenko and the biathlete Yevhen Malyshev they were the first casualties of the sport.
Sapylo was 21 years old and was part of the youth squad of the Karpaty Lviv, from the city of Lviv, in the Carpathian Mountains. He had studied at the National Academy of Ground Forces in Lviv and after the invasion was a tank commander in the defense of kyiv. He died during an air raid on the capital.
Martynenko, 25, was a striker for the FC Hostomel, an amateur football club from Ukraine. In the last championship that was played before the invasion, he was awarded as the best player and top scorer. Days after the start of the conflict, he died when a bomb destroyed his house in the kyiv region.
Malyshev was also a young talent with a bright future. He was part of the biathlon junior team, one of the most popular sports in the country, for the Lausanne 2020 Winter Youth Olympic Games. After that event, he decided to put aside his sports career and signed a contract with the Ukrainian Armed Forces. On March 1, nine days shy of his 20th birthday, he died defending Kharkiv, his hometown.
Dmytro Sharpartenth in the figure skating pairs competition in the Lillehammer Youth Olympic Games 2016, died in combat in Bakhmut. He was national runner-up in 2016 and double national medalist in junior. He was 25 years old.
Yevhen Obedinsky, who was captain of the Ukrainian men’s water polo team, died at the age of 39 during the Russian siege of Maripol. He had survived a battle with a brain tumor. Kira, her 12-year-old daughter, was wounded, captured by Russian troops and taken to Donetsk, although she was soon reunited with her grandfather, Oleksandr Obedinsky, a former coach of the sport’s national team.
Shooter Ivan Bidnyak He was the European runner-up in the 25-meter pistol team, in Osijek, Croatia, in 2013. When the war began, he enlisted as a volunteer and died at the age of 36 in combat in the city of Kherson.
Alexander Zakolodny y Grigory Grigoryev, two outstanding 35-year-old mountaineers, lost their lives fighting near Soledar, a city that was taken by Russian troops in mid-January. Grigoryev worked at the Kharkov City Council and also excelled in cycling and triathlon. Zakolodny was vice president of the Ukrainian mountaineering federation. He had the title of Snow Leopard for having climbed the five seven thousandth of the Pamir and the Tian Shan, in addition to having participated in several eight thousand expeditions, such as that of Makalu (2010).
Oleksii Dzhunkovskyi, a well-known trainer and former boxer, died in Irpin, a suburb of kyiv. According to Ukrainian media reports, Russian soldiers shot him when he was in the gym where he worked. Winner of four medals in the Military World Championships, since his retirement he dedicated himself to training children, in addition to collaborating with many renowned boxers, such as the FMB middleweight world champion, Vitalii Kopylenko.
Dear Maksym he was the first Ukrainian world champion in kick boxing, a title he achieved in 2014, and a benchmark in that discipline in his country. He also won a bronze medal at the Worlds. He was passionate about sports and also played rugby. He died at the age of 30 in the battle for Mariupol. He was part of the Azov Battalion, linked to far-right movements in Ukraine and considered one of the main resistances to the Russian invasion.
Oleksandr Pytel He was a Greco-Roman wrestler, who represented Ukraine in several hand-to-hand military competitions. He was 26 years old and was killed in combat in the Luhansk region.
Vadym Sotnykov He also excelled in hand-to-hand combat, a discipline in which he won gold at the European Championships and was a Ukrainian champion several times. He joined the military as a volunteer and lost his life defending the country from him.
Two of the deaths that hit Ukrainian sport the hardest were those of Alina Perehudova y Kateryna Diachenko, who died during the occupation of Maripol. The first was a young weightlifter with Olympic projection: she had been the Under 17 national champion in less than 40 kilos and was 14 years old. The second she was just 11 and she had won several medals in national competitions. “She had to conquer the world, but she died buried in rubble,” lamented her trainer, Anastasia Meshchanenkov.
“There can be no neutrality in sport while athletes from my country are dying on the battlefield”had denounced the Ukrainian president a few days ago Volodymyr Zelenskyin response to the IOC proposal.
And backed by the stories of these and many other athletes who have died since the start of the war, he vowed to “do everything possible for the world to protect sport from political influence and any other type of terrorist state.”
HS
