As an independent country for more than 22 years, Ukraine has managed to medal only five times in the Winter Olympics, compared to 115 in the Summer Games.
Three of
the winter sport medals were in the biathlon competition. That is where the
Ukraine team’s best medal hopes lie again at the long-anticipated 2014 Sochi
Olympics that start on Feb. 7.
At last
year’s Biathlon World Championship in the Czech Republic, Ukraine’s women team took
one gold, silver and three bronze medals, which placed them among the world’s
top 10 biathlon teams. Now the team of Juliya Dzhyma, sisters Vita Semerenko
and Valentyna Semerenko and Olena Pidhrushna, are poised to rock at the 2014
Winter Games.
The
biathletes set off to Russia’s Sochi on Feb. 2. Their first competition, a
7.5-kilometer sprint, is scheduled for Feb. 9.
Two weeks
before her departure, the team’s most highly decorated member, Valentyna
Semerenko, is calm.
“This year
trainings were the same as always,” Semerenko, 28, told the Kyiv Post in a phone
interview from a Czech training camp where the women’s team is holding its last
training sessions before the Olympics. “Our coaches didn’t stress out that this
year is more important because of the Olympics. So we have been in our regular
training mode.” In the meantime, the men’s team trained in Austria’s Hochfilzen.
“Now our
teams have entered their third month of training abroad and they will be back
home no earlier than in 1.5 months,” Volodymyr Brynzak, the president of
Ukrainian biathlon federation, told Radio Era. “It’s a challenge for an
athlete’s psychology. Our athletes have to train outside Ukraine because here
they don’t have everything they need to achieve good results.”
According
to Brynzak, Ukraine is the only country that has no certificated training
biathlon base and still shows good results.
The results
are indeed impressive and improving. In December Ukraine won a women’s biathlon
World Cup relay in Austria’s Hochfilzen. Later Semerenko
was named Ukraine’s Best Athlete of the Month.
At the
finish line in Hochfilzen, the team held a Ukrainian flag with “Together to Victory”
written on it. Some thought it was a reference to EuroMaidan events in Kyiv,
but Semerenko reveals that it wasn’t.
“In the
beginning of the training season our fans gave us a flag that was signed by the
fans from various Ukrainian cities,” Semerenko explains. “They wanted us to
take it to all the competitions. It’s not a flag from EuroMaidan. Sport and
politics must be separated.”
She started
her career the in northern Ukrainian city of Sumy along with her twin sister,
Vita Semerenko, her current team partner. However, Valentyna Semerenko denies that
sisterhood matters much in what they are doing.
“You don’t
think about sisters or brothers before the start,” she says. “The only right
thing is to concentrate on the best result you can achieve.”
“I’ve
always been fond of skiing,” Semerenko recalls. “When I was in the fourth grade
the coach was looking for someone who wanted to enter cross-country skiing
school. I thought it was something I’d like to try,” Semerenko says, adding
that lots of boys and girls came to the skiing school then.
Then she
was curious enough to try something new again. “Once my coach Hryhoriy Shamray
offered me to (change focus and) go with biathlon. And again – I decided to
agree. Why not?” says Semerenko.
She says
she was just “a little nervous” to participate in her first professional
competition in 2005 at the age of 20.
“It was in
Latvia, during Summer Biathlon World Championships. I felt great responsibility
as I wasn’t competing at home, in Ukraine. It’s a whole different level and of
course, it was tense experience,” Semerenko says.
The
competition in Latvia didn’t bring any victories. It was in 2011 when Semerenko
got her first personal medal.
Semerenko
admits Ukraine “shows rather good results in biathlon now”.
“But still
I wish we had better conditions for training at home,” the biathlete said. “In
the last few years we mostly train outside Ukraine. I get to come back to my
hometown Sumy just several times a year. But I hope that Ukraine will have a
good base for biathletes once – not only for professionals but for those
athletes who make their first steps in it.”
While she
travels a lot, Semerenko says it’s nothing like normal traveling.
“I dream to
see many countries. Our friends sometimes asked us what we saw in the country,
and we have to answer that the only thing we see is a firing area, a track and
a hotel,” Semerenko says.
Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Goncharova can be
reached at [email protected]
