Ukraine’s Paralympic team made a triumphant return to the country on Sept. 22, with several hundred people packing the arrivals hall of Kyiv’s Boryspil International Airport late on a rainy night to welcome their heroes home.
The crowd had good reason to celebrate: The Ukrainian Paralympic team had, at the closing of the games in Rio de Janeiro a few days earlier, achieved its best result ever, coming third among the 170 participating countries.
The 172 participants of the Ukrainian team brought home 117 medals, including 41 golds, 37 silvers, and 39 bronzes. They also set several world records.
During the 10 days of the Paralympic Games, the Ukrainian team was several times ranked in second place in the team standings, but by the end they had been overtaken by the British team. The Chinese team came first.
Valeriy Sushkevych, the president of the National Paralympic Committee of Ukraine, said the high personal motivation of the Ukrainian athletes was one of the main reasons for their success.
Ukrainian Paralympian Nataliya Kosmina, who won the gold in table tennis in Rio, agreed. She said it had taken her eight years to achieve her goal.
“Long years of tennis training and intense physical training helped me become the person I am today,” Kosmina said, adding that after a short rest she will start preparing for the next Paralympic Games, in Tokyo in 2020. “I will do my best to ensure that our national anthem plays as often as possible (at the Tokyo Games).”
Secret of success
Invasport, a sports training system for people with disabilities that is unique to Ukraine, allows people with vision, hearing, musculoskeletal and mental disabilities to train in a range of sports.
Today more than 50,000 adults and more than 20,000 children with disabilities attend various physical training and rehabilitation groups all over Ukraine.
It is in these groups that the skills of Ukraine’s future Paralympics champions are being honed.
Serhiy Kalayda, the head of the Poltava sports school for children with disabilities and the swimming coach of Ukrainian Paralympics team, has been working in the Poltava sports school since 1993, and trained many Paralympic champions. One of them is Ievgenii Bogodaiko, 22, who won one gold, one silver and seven bronze medals and beat the world 100 meters breaststroke record in Rio. Kalayda started training Bogodaiko 11 years ago.
“From his behavior in water, from his ability to learn quickly and work hard, it was clear at once that Bohodayko would be a champion,” Kalayda said.
Ukraine’s Ievgenii Bogodaiko competes in the Men’s 200-meter Individual Medley at the Olympic Aquatics Stadium during the Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on Sept. 13. (AFP)
Kalayda predicted that at least five kids that he is coaching now at the Poltava sports school would become Paralympic champions in the future.
Ukrainian Paralympic athletes have always tried to show they are worth every penny the government spends on them, says Sushkevych.
Ukraine started participating in the Paralympic games in Atlanta in 1996 winning seven medals – one gold, four silvers and two bronzes.
In the 2000 Paralympic games in Sydney, Australia, Ukrainian Paralympic athletes won 37 medals.
Before this year’s record performance, the Ukrainian national Paralympic team twice finished in fourth place – in Beijing in 2004, and in London 2012, winning 74 and 84 medals respectively.
Besides winning over a 100 medals in Rio, the Ukrainian athletes set 22 world and 54 European records and 32 Paralympics records in swimming, track and field, and power lifting.
“Reporters from the United States, Europe, Japan and Brazil were chasing us for interviews,” Sushkevych says. “Ukraine has become one of the leaders in world Paralympic sports.”
Sushkevych says that no one in Rio expected the Ukrainian team to perform so well, especially since their country is at war.
To some extend the skepticism was justified. After Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, Ukraine’s Paralympic team lost its main training base in Crimea’s Yevpatoriya. Also, because of Russia’s military aggression in the east of Ukraine, the government increased the defense budget, leaving less money for funding sports.
“We could have achieved better results if it wasn’t for the war, the lack of financing, and the loss of the Yevpatoriya training base,” Sushkevych said.
Unfair treatment
Ukraine’s Paralympic champions will receive from the government $40,000 for each gold medal, $26,000 for a silver and $18,000 for a bronze, while Ukrainian Olympic champions received $125,000 for a gold, $85,000 for a silver and $55,000 for a bronze.
Sushkevych says that both coaches and athletes believe the difference in cash rewards for able-bodied and disabled athletes is unfair.
“In Ukraine, a person with a disability first has to overcome various social and financial problems, and then go on to achieve a top international result,” Sushkevych says. “I really want the authorities to look at the Paralympic champions simply as people with disabilities, who survive on meager benefits, for whom secondary education in ordinary schools is often inaccessible, and for whom it’s difficult to get a job or move around in Ukrainian cities.”
Ihor Zhdanov, the sports minister, has promised that by 2018 the state cash rewards for Paralympic medalists will be the same as the ones that are given to Olympic champions
