Age: 26
Education: Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University
Profession: Paralympic Games swimming champion
Did you know? As a child, he was so obsessed with swimming that he would sometimes skip his school classes to train more in the pool.
Yevhen Bohodaiko’s right arm matured only down to its elbow. His left hand is missing two fingers.
That put him at a disadvantage at sports, but it didn’t stop him. The young boy was fond of soccer and martial arts.
Then, at the age of 11, he was invited to try swimming in a pool supervised by coaches working with disabled children.
At first, he wasn’t really good at swimming and the coaches suggested that he would be better off exploring other sports. But Yevhenii grew so fond of swimming that, at one point, he couldn’t imagine his life without it.
His early scores at competitions were not too impressive. But then he got a break: In 2009, one of the swimmers with Ukraine’s team for a European championship in Iceland was disqualified and Bohodaiko was invited to replace him.
In this championship, Bohodaiko, then 14, won two medals — a surprise even for him.
He’s always had a dream of reaching the achievements of his sports idol, legendary U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps, who won eight medals in one Olympics.
Incredibly, in the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Bohodaiko claimed nine medals — including in the back stroke, which was his weak spot.
“That was just something beyond reality,” he says. “Even now, years later, I can’t believe that actually happened.”
He became a superstar of Ukrainian para-athletics and one of the country’s most-awarded swimmers.
That was the result of tremendously hard work — Bohodaiko normally has two or three-hour training sessions daily when preparing for a competition.
As of today, he has won six gold, five silver and two bronze medals.
And he is looking forward to going to the next Paralympics, which is set to take place in Tokyo in 2021. Due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the competition in the Japanese capital, along with the main Olympics, was postponed from its original date in 2020.
But after Tokyo, Bohodaiko plans to end his sports career.
He decided that he will devote his life to entrepreneurship. He is already running a small company in Poltava producing plastic bottles and recycling raw materials.
“One needs to always be looking forward, keep smiling and work really hard,” he says. “Many people believe that success must necessarily fall from the sky into their hands, just like that. This is not the case. Anyone can have success in a certain field if he or she is devoted to this thing. I am absolutely sure that any hard work bears fruit.”
