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Ukrainian Olympic and Paralympic athletes in Athens

The Ukrainian Olympic team that took part in the 28th Olympic Games held in Athens in August 2004, won 9 gold, 5 silver and 9 bronze medals, 23 medals altogether, which puts Ukraine at the 12th place among other participating teams in the final medal standing.

It turned out to be a better result for the Ukrainian Olympic team than some of the sports analysts had predicted before the games. One of such predictions (made by Pricewaterhouse Cooper’s) placed Ukraine at the 13th place with 23 medals.

Ukrainian Summer 2004 Olympic Champions:

Yana Klochkova, swimming, 400m freestyle

Olena Kostevych, shooting

Yana Klochkova, swimming, 200m freestyle

Natalya Skakun, weightlifting

Yury Bilonoh, shot put

Yury Nikitin, trampoline

Irini Merleni, wrestling, freestyle

Valery Honcharov, gymnastics, parallel bars

Elbrus Tedeyev, wrestling

Silver medal winners:

Roman Hontyuk, judo

Ruslana Taran, Hanna Kalininina

and Svitlana Mateusheva, sailing

Olena Krasovska, track and field, 100m dash

Rodion Luka, Heorhiy Leonchuk, sailing, 49er

Ihor Razoryonov, weightlifting

Bronze medal winners:

Vladislav Tretyak, fencing

Andry Serdinov, swimming

Dmytro Hrachov, Viktor Ruban

and Oleksandr Serdyuk, archery

Serhiy Hryn, Serhiy Bilushchenko, Oleh Lykov and Leonid Shaposhnikov, rowing

Tetyana Tereshchuk-Antypova, 400m hurdles

Inna Osypenko, Tetyana Semykina, Hanna Balabanova and

Olena Cherevatova, rowing

Handball team

Viktoriya Styopina, Women’s High Jump

Hanna Bessonova, rhythmic gymnastics

The city of Athens was also, as the Olympic tradition requires, the venue of the 12th Paralympic games. They were opened on 17 September, just 19 days after the end of the Olympics.

Nearly 4,000 elite disabled athletes from 140 countries competed in 19 sports to make Athens the biggest Paralympic Games ever.

The Ukrainian Paralympic team was made up of 90 athletes who competed in archery, track and field, football, sitting volleyball, table tennis and wheelchair fencing.

Valery Sushkevych, president of the National Committee of Sports for the Handicapped, said that before the Games 925 rehabilitation events had been held in Ukraine in which about 40,000 disabled people had taken part. These events were organized with the help of the government and of the State Sports Committee of Ukraine. According to him, such events show that people with disabilities are provided with opportunities to take part in sports and in rehabilitation programmes which make them feel they are not isolated from society by their handicaps.

Mr Sushkevych also said that for the first time in the history of independent Ukraine — and of other post-Soviet countries for that matter — there were daily live broadcasts from the events of the Paralympic games shown on television.

The Ukrainian Paralympic athletes won 24 gold, 12 silver and 19 bronze medals and the over-all 6th place, after China, Great Britain, Canada, the USA and Australia. They were ahead of such countries as Spain, Germany, France and Japan.

The gold medals were won in track and field, swimming, powerlifting and other sports.

Among the remarkable achievements should be mentioned the one of Lidiya Solovyova, who, weighing only 40 kilograms, lifted the weight of 105 kilograms.

Photos by Mykola Bochok