Ukraine won its first gold medal on the opening day of competition at the 2018 Paralympic Games on March 10 in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
Vitaliy Lukyanenko took the gold in the men’s biathlon 7.5 km sprint for the visually impaired. This is Lukyanenko’s sixth Paralympic Games and his fifth gold medal. In total, he has already won ten Paralympic medals.
Lukyanenko’s teammate Anatoliy Kovalevsky added bronze in the men’s biathlon 7.5 km sprint for the visually impaired.
The Paralympics are to run from March 9 until March 18. Countries are competing for 80 medals in these Winter Games, in six key categories: alpine skiing, biathlon, cross-country skiing, ice sledge hockey, snowboarding and wheelchair curling. There are 20 athletes in Ukraine’s team among the over 570 athletes who expected to compete at the Paralympics this year. The Ukrainians will be competing in biathlon, cross-country skiing and snowboarding.
Other Ukrainian biathletes, including Lyudmila Lyashenko, Oksana Shishkova, Igor Reptukh also earned medals during the first day of the games.
Lyashenko took bronze in the women’s 6-km standing event. She shared the podium with Russians Katerina Rumyantseva and Anna Milenin, who are performing as neutral paralympic athletes after Russia was barred from flying its flag at the Winter Games for systematic, state-organize drugs cheating.
Reptyuh became the third in the standing race of 7.5 km, while Shishkova and her guide Vitaliy Kazakov captured silver in the sprint among women with visual impairment. She was 38.5 seconds off the gold-winning performance.
