Ukrainian athletes demand the leadership of the Ukrainian Athletic Federation be changed and its president Valeriy Borzov dismissed due to their failure to provide proper conditions for the preparation of the national team for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.
“This man (Borzov) cannot continue to be the president of the
Athletic Federation. Over the 16 years of his tenure he has not created a
single new base. He has not once said hello to us. He is an honored
man, but believes that he has achieved everything in sport, and owes
nothing to anybody. We do not want to work under his direction,” Olympic
bronze medalist in the relay race Yelizaveta Bryzgina said at a press
conference at Interfax-Ukraine on Thursday, Sept. 6.
She recalled the situation with the preparation of the Ukrainian
national team to the London Olympics, very poor conditions at the
Olympic training and preparation center Sviatoshyn, where athletes came a
week before the Olympics.
Bryzgina noted that this year a considerable sum of money had been
assigned for the preparation of athletes for the Olympics, but, as it
turned out, not all of these funds reach their intended purpose, and
Head of the State Service of Youth and Sports Ravil Safiullin was
surprised when athletes told him so. Around a hundred Ukrainian athletes
signed a complaint handed to the official.
“Everyone saw the conditions for our preparation in a news story by
TSN, we are fed up with this and we want to change it. We know how much
money is allocated by the state, but somehow it does not get to us,”
2008 Olympic bronze medalist in pole vault Denys Yurchenko, who
participated in the four latest Olympics, said.
The athletes also said that for criticizing the leadership of the
Federation and state coaches they were threatened to be expelled from
participation in important sports events.
A personal coach of 2012 Olympic bronze medalist Khrystyna Struy,
Serhiy Basenko, said that the coaches got only half the award money for
the preparation of Olympic champions and medalists.
As reported, a film crew from the 1+1 channel’s Television News
Service (TSN) filmed the conditions for the preparation of the Ukrainian
athletes before to the London Olympics. The news story showed the
athletes standing in queues in a Soviet-style dining room to take soups
and salads on their own. At the training base near Kyiv food spoilt
quickly as there were no air conditioners and refrigerators. There were
also no shops nearby, and it was prohibited to travel to Kyiv as a
violation of the training regime.
The athletes were provided with a fitness room with a dirty and torn
carpet, no mats and dangerous training simulators. There was even a
shortage of hurdles. Multiple world and European champions and Olympic
winners used toilets in which the drainage system did not always work,
and there was a constant smell of mould and urine.
However, First Deputy Head of the State Service of Youth and Sports
of Ukraine Serhiy Hluschenko said that preparations for the 2012
Olympics had been financed in full. The preparation of the Olympic team
was funded from Ukraine’s state budget. About Hr 215 million were
allocated in 2011 and over Hr 348 million in 2012.
