You're reading: Twenty medals of precious metals

Ukraine’s Olympic team came back from the London Games with 20 medals, meeting the expectations of Serhiy Bubka, president of the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine and the 1988 Seoul gold medal pole vaulter.

Still, both unexpected
victories and disappointing losses came in the 28 Olympic events in which the
team participated.

Ukraine ranked 12th in the
overall medal count (14th in gold) after taking six golds, five
silvers and nine bronzes – the lowest medal harvest since the Atlanta Summer Olympics
in 1996 when the nation first participated in games as an independent nation.

At the London Olympics, Ukrainian
boxing team distinguished itself. Vasyl
Lomachenko in the men’s lightweight and Oleksandr
Usyk in the men’s heavyweight got gold
medals, while Denys
Berinchyk had a silver and Taras Shelestyuk
won a bronze. Another bronze medal was taken by Oleksandr Gvozdyk.

Some of the boxers stood
out in other ways.

Usyk and Berinchyk had
their hair chopped into “oseledetsy,” or locks, sprouting from the top of an
otherwise closely shaven head – a hair style worn by Kozaks, Ukrainian warriors
from medieval times who fought against Czarist, Polish and Tatar oppression.

Both boxers also gladdened
hearts of Ukrainians by performing traditional “Hopak” dances celebrating their
victories. Lomachenko delighted the audience by sporting a tattoo of his father
and coach Anatoly’s face on his abdomen.

Ukraine’s expectations of Olympic
medals in fencing were granted by, first, Yana Shemyakina winning a gold in
women’s individual epee, then, experienced sabre fencer Olga Kharlan, getting a
bronze. Having a gold medal with the Ukrainian team in Beijing four years ago Khralan
was among favorites in London though failed to get to the final.

Inna Osypenko-Radomska, Olympic champion from 2008 in the women’s
canoe sprint over the 500-metre distance, took a silver in this event at the
London Olympics also becoming a silver medalist over the 200-metre distance.
Her teammate canoeist Yuri Cheban, a bronze medalist from Beijing, added the gold in sprint over 200 meters, showing a comprehensive win
in a new event to the Olympic program.

Shooter Olena Kostevych won third in the women’s 10 meter air pistol event and, after several days, a second one in the 25 meter pistol. 

Ukraine’s strong position in
world weightlifting embodied in winning Olympic gold in the 105kg weightlifting
division by Oleksiy Torokhtiy.

“I didn’t come here (to
the London Olympics) as a tourist, I came here as a person who has a
dream,” Torokhtiy is quoted as saying.

And Yulia Kalina’s bronze
in the women’s 58kg group was the second medal taken by Ukraine in London.

Yet, there were medals that
happened to pleasantly surprise the nation.

Ukraine’s Yana Dementieva,
Anastasia Kozhenkova, Natalya Dovgodko and Kateryna Tarasenko won first-ever
gold medal in the women’s rowing quadruple sculls.

The same story is about silver
medals of the javelin thrower Oleksandr Pyatnytsya or the wrestler Valerii
Andriitsev who beat a bronze medalist from Beijing and a current world champion
on his way to the final.

However, Ukrainians faced
defeats in the events where they used to gain great victories.

The nation still has no swimmers
of Yana Klochkova’s caliber. She was nicknamed the “golden fish” for winning
four Olympic swimming golds – the most of any Ukrainian athlete. There are no famous
names in Ukraine’s gymnastics today, although Ukrainian athletes brought six
golds in this event at the Games of previous years. That doesn’t belittle gymnast
Igor Radyvyliv’s success at becoming a bronze medalist from London.

Judo should be added to the
disappointing list. The nation’s hopes in this sport, Roman Gontyuk, an Olympic
medalist from Athens and Beijing, and Georgiy Zantaraya, a bronze medalist of
world championships in 2011, were beaten far from the final round. 

Bubka acknowledged the
surprises. “Olympics are extremely unpredictable competitions at which anything
can happen,” Bubka is quoted as saying by news agency Interfax-Ukraine.

Denys Sylantyev, who won the silver medal at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney in the
200 meter butterfly, put a different complexion on the matter. Knowing almost
everything about training for swimmers in Ukraine, he says that it could be managed
in a more beneficial way. Ukraine faces the problem of proper swimming pools
and has lost experienced trainers.

Soon after the London Olympics
ended on Aug. 12, Prime Minister Mykola Azarov announced a four-year training program for the nation’s athletes for the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 that will include construction of sports infrastructure.

Sylantyev welcomes those
decisions.

“One official told me that the state gave the Ukrainian
Federation of Swimming the exact amount of money for training swimmers for the
London Olympics it asked about,” Sylantyev adds. “But there were no results
shown, so the problem is how efficiently the money was spent.”

Kyiv Post staff writer Denis
Rafalsky can be reached at
[email protected]