The Ukrainian Weekly (https://www.ukrweekly.com/uwwp/author/ihor-stelmach/)
The final official tally saw Team Ukraine comprising 139 Paralympian athletes ready to participate in the 2020 Paralympic Games in Tokyo that began on August 24. Team Ukraine includes 59 female athletes and 80 male athletes participating in 15 sporting disciplines.
She will be competing at her first Paralympic Games, and this young World and European champion hopes to record personal bests in Tokyo. Since there are few athletes in the world better with a rifle in their hands than Ukraine’s Iryna Shchetnik, the odds are she will reach new personal heights on the world’s ultimate competitive sports stage.
The competitive fire burning inside of Roman Polianskyi was ignited and fueled by his father, who instilled in his son a love of sports at an early age. This has served as the foundation for his dominance in Para-rowing since the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games.
Now internationally known as a world Paralympic powerhouse, Team Ukraine certainly did not disappoint on the first day of action at the 2020 Paralympic Games in Tokyo.
The 2020 Summer Paralympics are scheduled to take place in Tokyo on August 24 through September 5. This will be Ukraine’s seventh consecutive appearance at the Summer Paralympics since 1996. Ukraine will be competing in the following 10 sports: archery, athletics, badminton, cycling, goalball, rowing, shooting, swimming, table tennis and taekwondo.
Eight-time Paralympic medalist Oksana Masters is prepared to compete as a cyclist in the Tokyo Paralympic Games. The minute she’s finished with the 2020 Games, her attention will shift to Beijing 2022, where she will compete as a cross-country skier in the Winter Games.
Ukraine wins additional eight medals
Ukraine’s Liudmyla Luzan captured a bronze medal in the women’s C-1 200-meter (canoe sprint) with a time of 47.034 seconds, barely being edged out by second-place finisher Laurence Vincent-Lapointe of Canada (46.786 seconds). Luzan finished first in her semifinal heat with a time of 47.339 seconds. The 24-year-old Ivano-Frankivsk native is the 2021 European champion in the C-1 500-meter and C-2 500-meter events.
The late 1980s witnessed the Soviet Union begin to fall apart, and along with it, so did their women’s artistic gymnastics program. Concurrently, Ukrainian gymnasts were dominating. The year 1989 saw six Ukrainians active at the senior level reach outstanding heights: Oksana Omelianchik, Olga Strazheva, Yulia Kut, Ludmilla Stovbchataya, Olesia Dudnik and Natalia Kalinina.
Beleniuk’s gold highlights wrestlers’ medal wins
The fourth day of August 2021 will go down in the annals as a momentous day for Ukraine at the Summer Olympics. Team Ukraine won four medals this day, including their first gold, a second silver medal and two more bronze, giving the nation a double digit total medal haul (11).
There is nothing new about Ukrainian sports stars transitioning into politics. Current Kyiv mayor Vitaliy Klitschko, who entered the political arena in 2006 upon retiring from the ring, may be the most notable. Reigning Greco-Roman wrestling world champion Zhan Beleniuk, however, is blazing a new trail in his homeland. In July 2019 he became the first person of mixed race to be elected to Ukraine’s parliament. Unlike Klitschko, Beleniuk continues his sports career.