The 30th Summer Olympic Games ended in London on August 12 with an impressive extravaganza. For 16 days on end, the entire world was riveted to Britain’s capital, where the best athletes of the planet vied in 36 sports for 303 sets of medals. This time Ukraine was represented at the Olympics by 245 athletes who fought for the prestige of this country in 28 sports. To sum it up, our team finished 14th, winning 6 gold, 5 silver, and 9 bronze medals. The first, second, and third best were the US (46-29-29), China (38-27-22), and the UK (29-17-19), respectively.
No sooner had the Olympics ended than Ukraine began to actively discuss their results. On the one hand, having won as few as 20 medals in London, our team showed the worst result in the years of independence. Ukrainian athletes had never clinched fewer than 23 medals at the Olympic Games in Atlanta (1996), Sydney (2000), Athens (2004), and Beijing (2008). Particularly, they set a record of sorts in Beijing, coming off 11th best in the overall count with 27 medals, including 7 gold ones. On the other hand, the Ukrainian athletes who took part in all the previous Olympics represented the Soviet sport school. So if you assess the Ukrainian team’s performance this year from the viewpoint of not only the athletes who were born in this country, but also those who were brought up here in the past 20 years, the result looks quite good. Besides, in the unofficial rating of countries at the London Olympics, Ukraine outdid such sport-loving countries as the Czech Republic (19th), Croatia (20th), Spain (22nd), and Portugal (73rd). According to Denys Sylantiev, world swimming champion, Merited Master of Sport, and silver medal winner at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, who visited The Day on the eve of the London Olympics closure, the Ukrainians must be proud of the result and thank our athletes for being skilled enough to take part in this prestigious competition. By contrast, given the smaller number of the medals won, the government should ponder over whether Ukrainian sport is moving in the right direction.
“A new generation of athletes defended the country’s honor in London: they were trained in Ukrainian, not Soviet, sports school”
Yurii RODIONOV, a Merited Coach of Ukraine, vice-president of the Federation of Boat
Racing:
“On the whole, Ukraine’s team showed a very decent performance. Compared with the Beijing Olympic Games, this year it has won fewer medals. But there is an explanation. Those who performed in Beijing included many ‘graduates’ of the Soviet sports school. I mean good results were mostly shown by the athletes who came to the big sport in the time of Soviet Union; some of them had even performed in the USSR combined team. And in London the country’s honor was defended by quite a different generation of athletes, who were trained in the Ukrainian sports school. And in my opinion, the result they have achieved gives an unbiased evaluation of the situation with sport in Ukraine. I think that a mere 20 medals compared with Beijing performance when the team hauled 27, is not as much an assessment of the athletes, rather the defective system of sports management. The state officials who are involved in sport administration should think in the following way: if we want Ukrainian sports school to develop and our athletes to win medals and perform not worse than this year, we need up-to-date training conditions to be created. The main focus should be made at the lack of training facilities for preparation. Our country does not have up-to-date specialized training facilities, where the national team would prepare during the year. I am speaking about normal conditions for athletes, like those created not only in Europe, but even Russia, Kazakhstan, etc. The gold medal won by Ukrainian boat racers is perceived as a feat, in particular, because our state has no up-to-date facilities for proper training.
“Surely, we did not win any medals in some kinds of sport where we expected better results. I have spoken with the coaches. They say almost unanimously that the change of athletes’ generations is taking place in Ukraine. We have good and very promising young athletes who lacked a year or a year and a half to make an effective performance. By getting to the Olympic Games the athletes already accomplished a sports feat.”
