SPORTSLINE (05/03/98)

SPORTSLINE

by Andrij Kudla Wynnyckyj

SOCCER

Despite last fall's flying start, it now seems that this season will not be Ukraine's year in football (as the world knows it), and for that matter, it might also prove disappointing at home for perennial Ukrainian premier division champions Dynamo Kyiv.

As of April 21, they were second in the division behind Shakhtar Donetsk, albeit with two games in hand. Once riding as high as 14th in the European rankings, the "Dynamisty" have slipped from the European top 20.

One Ukrainian team that continues to distinguish itself is Torpedo Zaporizhia. They are among the "worst five," standing third from the muddy bottom, or 356th in Europe. They boast Europe's absolute worst attacking game, having scored only nine goals in 20 games, for an average of less than half a goal a game. Their defense also is among the "five worst," having allowed 49 goals, although not as baroquely catastrophic as Jiul Petrosani of Romania, which has allowed a staggering 107.

Karpaty Lviv enjoyed an unbeaten run of 12 games this season, and defeated Dynamo recently after the hapless Kyivans were dropped from the Champions Cup by Juventus in the return game.

Well, we've avoided that painful subject long enough.

On March 18, before a sell-out crowd of 100,000, Coach Valerii Lobanovsky's dream of a third European Cup victory (he won with Dynamo in 1975 and 1986) was dashed, as Dynamo Kyiv was thrashed 4-1.

No doubt, the coach jinxed his team with a throw-back quote.

According to Reuters, following the hair-raising 1-1 tie with Juventus in Turin, Mr. Lobanovsky quoted the genocidal Joseph Stalin in cautioning his players not to become "dizzy with success." The murderous dictator originally made the remark in the final stages of the 1932-1933 famine in order to distance himself from the barbarities of his underlings during the collectivization drive.

Working in the other direction, the Dynamisty appear to have adversely affected the performance of a political party. Team President Hryhorii Surkis is also chairman of the centrist Social Democratic Party-United. Mr. Surkis hoped to translate success on the pitch to support at the ballot boxes. According to some observers, the defeat cost the party anywhere from 0.5 to 1 percent of the vote, and on March 29 left it perilously close to the 4 percent cut-off of the vote. The SDPU finished with 4.02 percent.

Be that as it may, on March 18, Filippo Inzaghi took up where he left off in Turin by scoring in the 29th minute. Juventus Zinadine Zidane worked his way down the left side of the penalty area, then launched a perfectly placed cross to Mr. Inzaghi, leaving him to simply direct the ball into a gaping net.

Then, in the 54th minute, it seemed that the impossible could still happen. Andrii Gusin (the goal scorer in the Turin match) sent a long shot at goalkeeper Angelo Peruzzi, and the Italian fumbled it. Serhii Rebrov pounced and the stadium went bananas.

The Italian team kept coming, and broke through. Mr. Inzaghi struck again in the 65th minute. On a corner kick from the left he rose higher than Ukrainian fullback Yurii Dmytrulin (who is taller by a few inches) and headed the ball past goalie Oleksander Shovkovsky.

In the 73rd minute, he did it again on a header. Mr. Inzaghi had scored a hat trick, his sixth goal in seven international games. The Kyiv throng was silenced and watched morosely as Alessandro Del Piero, thwarted so often in the home match, finally drove the nail into Dynamo's coffin four minutes from time.

That day, Monaco shocked the world by beating Manchester United to gain a berth in the semifinal. In the next round, Monaco even managed a 3-2 April victory over Juventus, but the Kyiv-killing black-and-white stripers won on aggregate, having taken the first match against the upstarts 4-1, and have thus advanced to the finals against Real Madrid.

Perhaps the only up note for Dynamo this season is that its defense, so tenaciously in evidence in Turin against Juventus, was fifth best in Europe, having given up only 11 goals.

Ukraine's junior team was the remaining hope for the blue-and-yellow to be represented at this year's football extravaganza in France. The team reached the 1/8 finals by beating Peru 2:0 and tying Finland 1:1, but lost to England, 5-2 on April 11.

From the excellent "Current Ukrainian Soccer News" Web page we learn that "the number of professional holidays in Ukraine, like Teacher's Day, the Day of Theater, etc., has been increased by a new one - The Day of Football ... April 29." The date is said to mark the official founding of Ukraine's national Team.

Visit: http://www.netwave.net/members/jarmola/news.html

TENNIS

Profound apologies are due to Sportsline's tennis fans, but, due to technical difficulties, our access to the sport's stats and info has been impaired. Stay tuned for a full report in a few weeks.

Ukraine and England met in Davis Cup play in early April in their Group 1, Euro-Africa Zone playoffs, held in Newcastle, with Albion pasting the Rutheni 3-0.

Of course, not all of the Ukrainians involved were on the losing side. Transplanted Canadian Greg Rusedski can't shed his ethnicity (happily, neither does he deny it). On April 3, Mr. Rusedski defeated Ukraine's Andrii Rybalko 6-4, 6-0, 6-4; while Tim Henman outfought Andrei Medvedev in a close match, 6-2, 6-7 (4-7), 6-4, 1-6, 6-1.

The next day, Mr. Rybalko served as a replacement for Dmytro Poliakov, Mr. Medvedev's expected partner, and the Ukrainians battled gamely for 114 minutes, pushing the English duo to the limit, but ultimately losing 4-6, 5-7, 6-7 (9-11).

On April 5, in the reverse singles, Mr. Rusedski dominated the Kyivan Russian Mr. Medvedev 6-1, 6-4, while Mr. Rybalko managed to take a game but dropped the match to Mr. Henman 1-6, 6-2, 2-6.

Mr. Rusedski and the Union Jack thus advanced to the World Group qualifying round scheduled for September.

ATHLETICS

It appears that Ukraine has another world beater in Sergey Bubka's event, the pole vault. On February 28, at the European Indoor Championships held in Valencia, Spain, Anzhela Balakhanova broke the women's indoor record of 14 feet, 6.75 inches by half an inch.

Ms. Balakhanova cleared the record height of 14 feet, 7.25 inches on her first attempt, erasing a mark set by Iceland's Vala Flossadotir in January. The Ukrainian's previous best was almost a full five inches lower (14 feet, 2.5 inches).

The glory did not belong to her for long, however, as Australia's Emma George went on a Bubka-like March tear into the record books. On March 7, Ms. George set an indoor mark of 14-8 in Adelaide, Australia, and on March 21, went outdoors in Brisbane to set a height of 15 feet, 0.75 inches.

Stay tuned, as the International Amateur Athletic Federation Grand Prix season kicks off in May with events in Rio de Janeiro, Osaka and Eugene, Oregon (the Prefontaine Classic).

YACHTING

Ruslana Taran and Olena Pakholchyk are continuing their domination of the 470-class in yachting. On March 30 in Hayama, Japan, they won the Shiseido Cup, a four-day competition held in Sagami Bay, southwest of Tokyo.

Facing competitors from Japan, Germany, Italy, Australia and the U.S., the Ukrainians scored six victories, three second places, one third in the 11-race tournament. They also finished eighth in one race, but the worst result of the competition is dropped when the final tally is made.

The tandem (Ms. Taran is the skipper) are also the reigning world champions, having won last year's world regatta, held in August 1997 in Israel, where compatriots Vlada Krachun and Natalia Haponovych placed third. To boot, they won four out of five of the world's Olympic-class regattas held that year (the Kieler Woche, the SPA Regatta, Hyeres Week and the Shiseido Cup).

For their efforts, the Swedish-based International Sailing Federation (ISAF) awarded them the title "World Sailor of the Year" for 1997.

Ms. Taran hails from Yevpatoria and Ms. Pakholchyk is from Kyiv. Formerly rivals, they hooked up in 1995, and success followed soon after, when they won that year's European championship, placed second at the worlds and then took the bronze medal at the Atlanta Games in 1996. Their coach is Viktor Kovalenko.

In case our readers were wondering, Ukraine does not have an entry in this year's Whitbread "Round the World" race.

BADMINTON

On April 21, at the European badminton championships in Sofia, Bulgaria, four Ukrainians, Vladislav Druzhenko, Mikhail Mizin, Dmitry Miznikov and Konstantin Tatranov, lost their first round matches. Mr. Druzhenko had the misfortune of drawing the world's second-ranked player, Peter Gade Christensen of Denmark, and put up some valiant resistance before losing 12-15, 15-17.

Mr. Mizin lost to Russia's Vadim Itskov 6-15, 8-15, while Mr. Miznikov fared better, as he won his first game 15-9, but was ousted as Scotland's Craig Robertson took the next two by scores of 15-13, 15-11. Mr. Tatranov also managed to take one game, but lost 10-15, 15-11, 7-15 to Poland's Jacek Niedzwiedzki.

In the women's competition, Hanna Khomenko lost 6-11, 8-11 to Maria Kizil of Belarus; Natalia Holovkina lost 8-11, 1-11 to Rebecca Pantaney of England; and Olena Nozdran was wiped out 1-11, 3-11 by Russia's Elena Sukhareva.

In the team competitions Ukraine made good on its promotion to the Division 1 level, beating Russia 3-2 on April 18. However, the next day Ukraine faced Denmark, the country which has the potential to become the first non-Asian champion at the world tournament to be held in Hong Kong this month. The Danes won 5-0, taking the mixed doubles 15-5, 15-2; the men's singles 15-5, 15-2; the women's singles 11-2, 11-7; the women's doubles 15-2, 15-4; and men's singles 15-6, 15-12, in an awesome display of power.

FIGURE SKATING

The doors were open for many of Ukraine's competitors at the World Championships held in Minneapolis on March 29-April 5, since many Olympians had decided not to compete due to injury (particularly in the men's singles).

Viacheslav Zahorodniuk unfortunately damaged his chances for a podium in the short program, where he placed fifth. He rebounded in the long, placing third, and finished fourth overall.

Novice Yevhen Pliuta fared respectably, placing ninth. It appears that Dmytro Dmytrenko's days in competition are over, as he did not enter the competition.

Olena Liashenko kept Ukraine in the top 10 in the women's event, placing sixth in the short program and seventh in the long, for an overall seventh place. Kyiv's Yulia Lavrenchuk (IBM's "watch for me" girl) finished 12th.

In the pairs, Evgenia Filonenko and Ihor Marchenko were 11th, while in the ever controversial ice dance (in which the top four competitors appeared to have been assigned rankings prior to the competition) Irina Romanova and Ihor Yaroshenko rose from ninth in the compulsories to finish seventh overall. Olena Grushina and Ruslan Honcharov were 13th throughout.

Many have expressed concern about whether Ukraine has any depth in figure skating, since a drought of champions has set in since Oksana Baiul and Viktor Petrenko whetted our appetites.

Therefore, "Sportsline" notes that the 1998 the Junior World Championships held in December 1997, Yulia Obertas and Dmytro Palamarchuk won the pairs event, while compatriots Olena Kokhanevych and Vitalii Dubina, and Aliona Savchenko and Dmytro Boienko placed 12th and 13th, respectively.

Vitalii Danylchenko is ranked fifth in the world in the men's singles, but unfortunately had a rough outing in the long program and finished ninth overall. Khrystyna Kobaladze and Oleh Voiko are up-and-comers in ice dancing, also finishing ninth.

However, there does appear to be reason for concern in the women's (or "ladies" as the skating federation prefers to call it) singles event, as there were no entries from Ukraine.