Fans watch Ukrainian athletes compete at the Olympic Games in the fan zone at VDNKh in Kyiv on Thursday, Aug. 1, 2024.Olga Ivashchenko/The Globe and Mail
Most countries enjoy at least one special moment at the Olympics, when their athletes exceed expectations or win multiple medals in one session. For Ukraine, that moment came Sunday night.
Over the course of a couple of hours at the Stade de France, Ukrainian athletes won three medals in track and field. First came bronze in women’s high jump, then gold in the same event, then bronze in men’s hammer throw.
By the time the last medal was won, 70,000 spectators were on their feet applauding, and Olympic officials had ignored protocol and let the three Ukrainians run across the field for a group hug, each draped in the country’s blue and yellow national flag.
More than 2,400 kilometres away in Kyiv, Olha Hvozdykova was among the millions of Ukrainians who were cheering along with the crowds in Paris. Sunday was the most successful day yet at the Olympics for Ukraine, which now has seven medals – two gold, two silver and three bronze.
“Every victory in this most difficult period is very important for Ukraine and for me personally,” Ms. Hvozdykova said after watching the athletes take their victory lap online. “It will be an inspiration for the further struggle of our athletes – both those at the stadium in Paris and those who are now defending our country on the battlefield.”
For a country that’s more than two years into a war with Russia, the Olympics have offered a distraction and a chance to remind the world of what Ukraine is going through. That message wasn’t lost on the three medalists, who each said their success in Paris represented far more than individual accomplishments.
“In my country, Russia killed people,” said high jump winner Yaroslava Mahuchikh, 22, who holds the world record in the event. “Almost 500 sportsmen died in this war, and they will never compete. They will never celebrate. They will never feel this atmosphere. So, I’m happy with the gold medal, and it’s really for all of them.”
Ukrainians have been following the Games as much as possible. Air-raid sirens make it difficult to gather in pubs or open spaces to share the excitement collectively, so most people follow the competitions online.
Officials in Kyiv have managed to set up an outdoor fan zone in the Expocentre of Ukraine, a sprawling Soviet-era exhibition complex in the southwestern part of the city. Last week, a few dozen people took up seats on beanbags to watch tennis on a giant screen.
Roksolana and her husband cheer for Ukrainian athletes at the Olympic Games in the fan zone at VDNKh in Kyiv on Thursday, Aug. 1, 2024Olga Ivashchenko/The Globe and Mail
“We follow all the events that are happening, rejoice at successes and grieve at failures,” said Roksolana Dovhaninets, 32, who was among the onlookers.
She’s a coach and deputy director of a children’s sports school and said it’s been hard to keep kids active since the war started. “There is a lot of anxiety now. Children have been in shelters for a long time, and there is not much room to move,” she said. “But now they have to come to life, because there is an example of athletes who did not give up during the war and managed to reach the Olympics.”
Sergiy Stakhovsky, 38, does his best to follow the Games from the front line whenever he can find an internet connection. He gave up his tennis career and joined the army after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 and is now part of the Security Services Centre of Special Operations “A.”
He had dreams of competing in the Olympics and can only imagine what it would have been like to compete on the clay courts of Roland Garros, where the tennis matches were held. “Russia changed the plans in the lives of many Ukrainians with its brazen invasion. And mine changed too,” he said in an interview last week from an undisclosed location.
Even non-sports fans have come to see the Paris Games as more than an athletic endeavour. “I believe that in principle Ukraine should participate in them, because we have to be heard everywhere, all over the world. We have to be seen,” said Viktoriia Doroshenko, 27, who never had much interest in the Olympics before the war but was among those in the fan zone last week. “Because if we all fold our arms and sit there, or if we all talk only about the war, I think the world will forget about it very quickly.”
As the fighting drags on and international attention wanes, Ukrainian officials have been keen to use the Olympics as a platform to boost public awareness. They’ve set up a Ukrainian House at the Games called “Volia,” which means freedom and will.
The venue is filled with books, pamphlets and presentations about the war and includes a section of battered seats from a stadium in Kharkiv that was destroyed by Russian shelling. There’s also a spacious area with a big television screen, and on Sunday roughly 2,000 people jammed into the house to watch the athletics events, said Taras Bervetskyi, a 19-year-old volunteer who came to France from Lviv shortly after Russia’s invasion.
The reality of the war is never far from every Ukrainian, including the country’s Olympians. For some athletes, the end of the competition in Paris could mean heading off to battle.
Mykhaylo Kokhan, who won bronze in the hammer throw, is a soldier who has been on leave while he trained for the Olympics. “Yes, my friends are in the war now, and also I’m in the military,” he said Sunday. When asked if he would be returning to active service, the 23-year-old replied: “I don’t know yet because I still have more meetings.”
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