Age: 25
Education: Dnipro Regional Center for Physical Education and Sports Invasport
Profession: Sportswoman, para-athlete in club and disc throwing
Did you know? Apart from sports, Ovsiy likes photography and making videos
For Zoya Ovsiy, sports mean everything. They are a tool for not giving up on her life.
Born with no legs and missing a few fingers on her hands, Ovsiy was abandoned as a baby and spent many years in an orphanage in Dnipro, the industrial city of 1 million people, some 500 kilometers southeast of Kyiv.
But hard times didn’t break her, they only made her stronger.
Now 25-year-old Ovsiy is a successful Paralympic athlete at club and disc throwing and looks forward to new victories ahead.
“I’m the only one from Ukraine who represents the club throwing at international competitions,” said Ovsiy.
This year at the World Para Athletics Championship, which was held in November in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Ovsiy set a new world record, throwing the wooden club more than 25 meters and winning a gold medal. She also won a bronze for disc throwing.
But Ovsiy’s major debut was in 2016 at the summer Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, where she took home silver and bronze medals.
“I feel proud every time when the flag of my country which I represent is raising, and when the national anthem of my country is playing,” said Ovsiy.
When she was just a girl living in the orphanage, sports already attracted her. Ovsiy loved to watch boxing on TV with boys.
Many years later, she travels around the world participating in competitions, but the passion is the same.
“I don’t go there for sightseeing, I go there to perform,” said Ovsiy.
Today, the athlete’s biggest dream is to win a gold medal at Paralympic Games in Tokyo next year. “But a dream will stay a dream without working hard to make it happen,” she said.
But even her success has not brought back those who gave her life. Their betrayal won’t be forgiven.
“I don’t need them. My coaches and friends are my family, because they are always with me,” said Ovsiy, whose biological father was a medical worker and among those who helped the liquidators in Chernobyl after the nuclear reactor explosion in 1986.
It is still hard for her to share sad moments from the past, but those circumstances made her a real fighter.
“If you live in the past, there is no future,” said Ovsiy.
Now living in her own apartment in Dnipro, she is happy not to be doomed to spend the rest of her life in a nursing home, often the only option for people with disabilities.
But there are a few things in her city that are still terribly annoying, such as poor access to public buildings due to a lack of wheelchair ramps, or curbs too high for a person like her to pass smoothly. Even public transportation can be a problem.
“When the bus comes to the stop, I have to look for a few men to help me to get into the bus,” said Ovsiy.
Another sad circumstance, she said, is that new children with special needs in orphanages have much worse disabilities and are not able to participate in sports.
“They have very severe forms of cerebral palsy. They eat and move but don’t understand,” she said.
Ovsiy also dreams of a sport base for athletes with special needs in Dnipro to replace one located on the Crimean peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.
“We really need the base as soon as possible so we could train there in winter as well. In winter we can’t do it, except just training muscles in the gym,” said Ovsiy.
