Turning the pages back... July 27, 1992 (07/21/96)

Turning the pages back...

July 27, 1992

As the XXV Summer Olympics Games were about to open in Barcelona in 1992, Ukraine expected to capture Olympic medals in track and field, gymnastics and rowing, according to the president of the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine and Ukraine's minister of sports and youth affairs, Valeriy Borzov (himself a double gold medal winner at the 1972 Olympics, an athlete once considered the fastest man in the world).

And, for the first time in their history, the Summer Games would see the blue-and-yellow national flag of independent Ukraine as 81 athletes from Ukraine - 16.10 percent of the Unified Team of the Commonwealth of Independent States - would be competing.

Marching behind the Unified Team banner, but carrying little blue-and-yellow flags, young men and women from Ukraine would be attired in "neutral" uniforms made in Yugoslavia, but they would wear Ukrainian flag patches as well as patches depicting wreaths of flowers, the symbol of that year's Ukrainian team. (In the 1992 Winter Games the "Unies" had worn uniforms emblazoned with "CCCP" - USSR in Cyrillic; patches on those uniforms designated the individual countries that made up the Unifed Team.)

Eighteen of Ukraine's athletes competed in track and field events; among them world champion pole vaulter Serhiy Bubka, who then resided in Berlin. "Why not compete for Ukraine? I think it's the best solution... I don't understand why we must be one team of 11 countries," he told the Associated Press earlier that year.

Fourteen of Ukraine's athletes competed in rowing events: single sculls, double sculls, coxless pairs, coxless fours, quadruple sculls and eights. Other athletes competed in basketball, boxing, Greco-Roman wrestling, cycling, volleyball, handball, gymnastics and rhythmic gymnastics, canoeing/kayaking, equestrian sports, yachting, swimming, diving, archery, fencing, shooting and weightlifting.

Organizations such as the Ukraina Society and the sports associations Dynamo, Kolos and Spartak were sponsors of Ukraine's athletes. But financial strains continued to plague the Ukrainian Olympians. "I want to thank our diaspora for its contribution, which paid for 18 members (of the Olympic team)," noted Mr. Borzov. "And it is not only the financial aid that we appreciate, but also the diaspora's attention to our problems."

Once the Barcelona Games were over, Ukraine's final take in medals was 17 gold, 14 silver and nine bronze, for a total of 40 medals. Not bad for a contingent of 82 athletes. That total would have placed Ukraine in fifth place in the final country rankings. Ukraine's athletes accounted for 36 percent of the Unified Team's medals, and 38 percent of its gold. Without Ukraine's contribution, the Unified Team would have finished third instead of first in terms of the number of medals won.

For the record, most of Ukraine's medals were won in gymnastics: Tetiana Gutsu, two gold (one individual, one team); Tetiana Lysenko, two gold (one individual, one team); Oleksandra Tymoshenko, two gold (one individual, one team - rhythmic gymnastics); Liudmyla Stovbchata (team); Oksana Skaldina (team - rhythmic gymnastics); Ihor Korobchynsky, Hryhoriy Misiutyn, Rustam Sharipov (team).

Source: The Ukrainian Weekly, July 19 (No. 29), 1992, and August 16 (No. 33), 1992.

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