Ukrainian Paralympic athletes have returned from the 2018 Winter Paralympics that were held on March 9-18 in PyeongChang, South Korea. The team ranked sixth having gained seven gold, seven silver, and eight bronze medals.
The team participated in three out of six disciplines: biathlon, snowboard, and cross-country skiing.
This year, Ukraine has finally equalized the financial awards for Olympic and Paralympic medal winners: $125,000 for gold, $80,000 for silver and $55,000 for bronze. Before that, Paralympic athletes used to receive one third less.
According to Svitlana Tryfonova, one of the first Paralympic champions in Ukraine, when Ukrainians have just started participating in Paralympics, coaches didn’t know how to train them.
“But it turned out that everything remains the same, just a little bit more efforts should be made. It means helping with a wheelchair, heavy rucksacks, moral support where necessary,” Svitlana Tryfonova, who took part in Paralympiad in Atlanta in 1996, told the Kyiv Post at the Boryspil Airport where the team arrived on March 20.
Now she considers the Paralympic Games to be a useful tool for attracting the attention of the society to the social problems, as everyone has the same rights, despite physical disabilities, she said.
