CHORNOMORSK, Ukraine – When Oleksandra Paskal first stepped onto the mat at age 4, her rhythmic gymnastics coach saw nothing but potential in a sport where the Olympics is the ultimate goal. Then a Russian missile destroyed her summer home south of Odesa, burying her under rubble and severing her left leg.
Oleksandra’s coach, Inga Kovalchuk, is proud of her ability to predict the future. But it is increasingly clear that Russia’s war against Ukraine is demolishing the seeds of a sporting culture that was a European power.
Two years after she was injured in May 2022, Oleksandra was among 12 girls diligently following her demanding coach’s instructions in the sunny room. No one paid attention to her prosthetic leg, but although she has even more of the courage and dedication that first caught Kovalchuk’s attention, she will never be the same.
“Oleksandra, you do the exercise with your entire feet, the others – with your toes,” Kovalchuk told the group.
Now 8 years old, the girl who once wanted to compete in the Olympics now dreams of the Paralympics. She returned to training after just six months of rehabilitation. Radiating confidence, she won her first competition a year after the attack with unwavering grace and fluidity and is inspiring followers far beyond the rhythmic gymnastics community.
“Sometimes I even get scared: will I make it? Not her, but me? Kovalchuk confessed. “And in general, it’s incredibly difficult for all of them right now.”
It takes a decade and a nationwide infrastructure of training facilities, feeder schools, equipment and coaches to produce an Olympic champion, and a process that begins in early childhood ends up eliminating most competitors long before they reach the Games.
More than 500 sports facilities were damaged or occupied by Moscow troops, depriving young athletes of a place to train, according to the Sports Ministry. Coaches joined the army or fled abroad, and some children who left at the start of the war did not return. Those who remain find that their practices are often interrupted by air raid alarms that can last for hours. The destruction of sports schools means that some children may not even begin to discover their potential.
Even if the war stops tomorrow, Ukrainian athletics could take a decade to recoup losses, wrote Veerle De Bosscher, a professor of sports policy at Vrije University in Brussels, Belgium, who researches how countries produce champions, in an email to The Associated Press.
Seventy of Kovalchuk’s 110 prewar gymnasts, including some of his best prospects, fled the country and did not return. She has some new students, including internally displaced children, but her class now totals just 60.
“My main task today is not to achieve good results in sports, but to preserve the physical and mental health of our children,” said Kovalchuk.
According to Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, more than 2 million children have fled the country. The departures have already impacted several sports, as coaches lost interns in whom they had invested years of work.
At Kiev’s Liko Diving School, Ukraine’s largest, 50% of the most promising children have gone missing, said Illia Tseliutin, head coach of Ukraine’s national diving team. Two of the 20 coaches joined the army and three fled the country. Those numbers are almost certainly higher for frontline schools to the east and south, he said.
Tseliutin understands on a personal level. He fled the Luhansk region in 2014, shortly after the first attack by Russian forces there, and his hometown of Rubizhne has been occupied since 2022. Many Ukrainian divers and swimmers originate from the occupied east and south and have no home to go to. return, let alone a functioning pool and therefore remain abroad.
“We are at war, children are leaving and can compete for other countries,” said Tseliutin. This creates a vicious cycle even for those who remain in Ukraine, who have fewer high-level athletes to compare themselves to and who find their pool time interrupted by hours-long air raid alarms, he said.
Previously, coaches planned the training schedule four years in advance. Now they are simply trying to ensure their sport survives the war.
“Our task is to prepare for competitions,” said Tseliutin. “The judges don’t care where you come from, they just score your jumps.”
The southern city of Kherson, located on the banks of the Dnipro River, was once a fertile ground for Ukrainian rowing. The Ukrainian rowing team going to Paris this year features several teams from the region, which also includes previous Olympians.
But that section of Dnipro is now the only natural barrier between Ukrainian and Russian troops in the region, with drones, artillery and missiles flying overhead daily and mines in the water.
All 200 children and 15 coaches involved in rowing in Kherson have fled the city, which is under almost constant attack, and only about 20% of children still row, whether in Ukraine or abroad, said Ihor Harahulia, president of the non- governmental. Kherson Rowing Federation in profit. The Kherson School of Higher Sportsmanship, where rowers and other competitive athletes trained, is a pile of rubble following numerous Russian attacks and flooding caused by the explosion of the Kakhovka dam last June.
It is unlikely that any child in Kherson today will discover an untapped talent for rowing, given the danger in the water and the lack of coaches and facilities. Harahulia is still there, but even he has abandoned the waters. He delivers humanitarian aid by car.
“There is no way anyone can row now because it is almost certain to be fatal,” he said.
But there is no point in rebuilding the sports infrastructure now, said acting Sports Minister Matvii Bidnyi, “because there will be another strike and we will (lose) the money invested”.
That’s why people like Hennadii Zuiev, who is among the coaches who fled Ukraine, struggle to imagine a return. The 48-year-old high jump coach left Kherson in the early days of the full-scale invasion of Russia and moved from country to country across Europe with his family.
Before the war he had several young athletes. It is now in the Portuguese city of Monte Gordo and focused only on adults. Among those he has trained are Ukrainian high jumpers Katerina Tabashnyk and Andriy Protsensko. The latter qualified for the Paris Olympics.
Zuiev would like to return to Ukraine, but his city is under constant fire and the school where he studied is in ruins.
“I still can’t imagine how, where and what I will do,” he says. “Every day I think about it and every day I can’t find an answer for myself.”
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John Leicester contributed from Paris.
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