A wonderful finish allowed Olena Pidhrushna to steal the relay victory for the Ukrainian team from the hands of Germany’s Laura Dehlmeier on January 17 in Ruhpolding, at the fifth leg of the biathlon World Cup. “Our biathletes are world class. It is not like 10 years ago, when we were just on our way to sports honors,” says Vitalii Ihnatenko, first deputy head of the Ternopil regional branch of the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine, in a commentary to The Day. “Now we have Olympic champions in our team. They already know what to do on the track. Olena has not been performing for a year, and certainly she has not yet regained her maximum conditions, so to say, but I think she will have everything at the World Cup, and for the next year – at the Olympics. Pidhrushna managed to secure a win thanks to her professionalism. She did not rush as she was losing the distance to the German, who was younger and had more running power, but that was the situation when tactics and class come to play! Olena kept her reasonable pace and did all the shooting without mistakes. And the German athlete was short of one second to overtake her. And that second was enough for Olena to become the champion.”
Ihnatenko knows Pidhrushna since the origins of her sports career. “Olena has always been a leader. I remember her as she was just starting her engagement in biathlon. Back then I worked as head of the Department for Physical Culture and Sport at Ternopil Oblast State Administration. It was in 1994-95. Oleh Bunt, Olena’s first coach, brought her to the biathlon base. She had started her training and just in a few years she began to show excellent results. We immediately understood that she was our hope for the Olympics. And as you can see, we had waited not in vain! I remember talking to her. I used to say to Olena, ‘you have to endure – and if you do, you would be on top.’ She endured and became an Olympic champion, she deserved her fame,” says Ihnatenko. He adds that the Ternopil region has brought up many talented athletes, and the captains of both Ukrainian teams for biathlon – male and female – are from Ternopil area, Olena Pidhrushna and Dmytro Pidruchny. “The school yields its results and we must support biathlon, as well as sport in general,” says Ihnatenko. “But, unfortunately, in our country it is done not exactly in the way it should have been.”
