Name: Oleg Verniaiev
Age: 24
Education: Ukraine National University of Physical Training and Sports
Profession: Gymnast
Did you know? Verniaiev has more than 50 medals and other awards, including state ones — the Order of Merit and the Order of Prince Danylo Galytskiy
Oleg Verniaiev, a 24-year-old gymnast from Donetsk, was in an excellent mood when he met the Kyiv Post in the gym of the Ukrainian National Olympics Team’s training base outside of Kyiv. He had just returned from Switzerland, where on Nov. 2 had won the 34th Arthur Gander Memorial championship (his fourth win in a row).
His greeting was exuberantly gymnastic as well: A flip on monkey bars. And right after that he leapt into a large pit full of foam cubes.
“Our new pit for soft landings after tricks!” Verniaiev said, emerging from the landing pit, in which he takes personal pride: It was Verniaiev and his trainer Hennadiy Sardinskiy who persuaded Ukraine’s Ministry of Sports to build it for the use of Ukraine’s athletes.
Verniaiev has become a celebrity in Ukraine after winning gold on the parallel bars and silver in the overall men’s competition at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
He has used his fame and influence to press for better training conditions for gymnasts and other athletes.
Despite winning more than 50 medals at the Olympics, Universiades, European and world championships, and the European Games, Verniaiev is not just a serious, quiet and determined person. He likes to have fun. “Of course I don’t get wasted or use drugs. Cause it’s bad for my training regime, you know. But, movies, parties, girls…I enjoy all of that,” Verniaiev said.
Verniaiev said he was lucky to have the best trainer and talent.
“I’m really into it. Some people need even a year to become proficient with a certain trick, and to include it in their program. I can perform a trick in competition after doing it for the first time,” Verniaiev said.
He wants to continue teaching gymnastics after he retires.
“I’m going to keep competing at least until the Tokyo Olympics (in 2020), and then we’ll see. Ideally, I want to open training clubs all over Ukraine, so that gymnastics will continue to be something Ukraine can be really proud of,” Verniaiev said.
Verniaiev’s dream is an expensive one for Ukraine: training equipment alone costs hundreds of thousands of hryvnias. Moreover, even after his successes, the gymnastic training bases in Lviv and Dnipro face closure, he said.
“This is bad, and we will have to do everything possible not to let them build yet another shopping mall or a fitness center in their place,” Verniaiev said.
