Ukrainian athletes take part in the European Championships 2022 in Munich in times of war. Conversations and impressions, how they deal with it and where their thoughts are during the Multi-EM.
The war comes over the cell phone. It finds its way to Munich for the European Championships 2022. By push message, via WhatsApp or on Instagram. And he eats his way into the thoughts of the best athletes in Ukraine.
“You can’t be the same as before”
“Sport was my whole life, pole vault my love,” says athlete Jana Hladijtschuk, 29, in an interview with the sports show: “But if you lose your security, if you worry about your family, then you can no longer do the same as be in front of it.”
Hladijtschuk is one of 160 athletes at the Multi-EM in Munich who are taking part for Ukraine. In March, shortly after Russia began the war of aggression on Hladychuk’s homeland, she finished fourth at the World Indoor Championships in Belgrade. Now in Munich she already failed in the qualification.
Starikova gets “bomb alert” on her cell phone
In the past, that would have been a reason to cry, she says. On Monday (08/15/2022) she sat against it “emotionless next to other eliminated pole vaulters”watched them cry and thought: “I will never cry again because I didn’t qualify for a competition.”
Many of her compatriots feel the same way at the European Championships in Munich. Ukrainians are represented in almost all sports. They celebrate great successes like track cyclist Jolena Starikova, who secured a silver in the time trial and a bronze in the keirin.
But the war was also with her all the days on the specially built railway at the Munich Exhibition Center: “Whenever there is a bomb alarm at home, I get a message on my smartphone. And every time I feel scared.”she says: “But I am proud that I can represent my country here and that our flag can be hoisted.”
Athletes from Russia and Belarus excluded
Showing the flag in these difficult times – that’s one reason why Starikova and all the others are there. “We try to motivate our soldiers and our soldiers motivate us”Hladijchuk also says: “But when you see so many dead people, all the ruins, you no longer believe that you can help with sport.”
Athletes from the attacking country Russia, like Belarusian athletes, are not allowed to take part in Munich. The International Olympic Committee had recommended their exclusion and the Munich organizers quickly followed suit.
“I don’t want to see murderers on the train”
The high jumper Jaroslawa Mahutschich, who fled by car and now lives in Germany, spoke out vehemently against the start of Russian athletes during the World Championships in Eugene/USA in July (“I don’t want to see murderers on the train”). In the Sportschau interview, before the start of the European Championships on Sunday, she says what she thinks about the return of the athletes:
I can’t imagine it at this moment. Many people lost their lives at the hands of Russian soldiers. The athletes live in this country and have not changed anything about it. I think it will be possible only after the war is over and Ukraine has rebuilt its cities.
On Thursday evening, Hladijtschuk ran through Munich’s Olympic Park in her blue tracksuit with a yellow “UKRAINE” inscription on her back, and she also wore her eyeliner in the national colors of blue and yellow. She is proud of her country, and the people here keep asking her about the situation there.
Big applause for Ukraine’s athletes in Munich
The applause, or so it seems, is particularly strong among the Ukrainians. The impression of Vitaly Voronzow, who came 39th in the triathlon and still seemed satisfied, was similar: “I keep hearing Ukrainians or other Europeans cheering me on. I’m really happy to be able to compete here.”
The para mixed team, which earned the country’s first gold medal, listened to the national anthem with tears in their eyes. Thoughts were probably elsewhere. Just like the walker Marjan Sakalnyzkyj after his use: “Of course I think of Ukraine because my whole family is there”he said: “Nobody knows if a bomb will fly into the house. Today, tomorrow. Or never.” His brother, his sporting role model, is fighting at the front these days.
Hladychuk escaped with his father and brother
Hladychuk fled to Poland with her mother the day after the start of the war. Since then she has not been in her own country and has not seen her father or brother. That, too, is typical for Ukrainian athletes these days. She keeps in touch with the two in Kyiv via cell phone. “My father doesn’t want to leave home because he’s in his house there and doesn’t want to lose it”she says, her eyes water, her voice trembles.
However, getting to Munich from Bydgoszcz was not that easy: because there was no plane for her and the batons didn’t fit on a train, she was eventually picked up by the “Athletes for Ukraine” association, which the biathlon relay team Olympic champion from 1992, Jens Steinigen, founded together with other (former) athletes in March and is committed to Ukraine’s athletes.
Young Ukrainian athletes in the Olympic Stadium
The club had previously organized another transport in cooperation with Hladijtschuk: 35 young athletes between the ages of 13 and 22 from the particularly competitive east of Ukraine came to Wolfratshausen in the south of Munich in April. There they received the trainer Norman Feiler, the place provided them and their families with apartments. They can train at the local stadium.
“When jets flew over us back then, some started to cry,” says the 52-year-old Feiler: “Because the last jets they heard dropped bombs. First we had to explain to them that that’s not the case here. “
On Thursday he was in the Olympic Stadium together with Hladijchuk and half of the athletes, from the Ukrainian point of view they could celebrate bronze for high jumper Andriy Prozenko. Feiler will be at the stadium with the other half on Sunday.
Ukrainian training group visiting the stadium with coach Norman Feiler (2nd from right) and athlete Jana Hladijtschuk (middle behind flag)
The war recently reached Hladychuk on his cell phone again
Hladychuk tries to distract himself from all the bad news from home for two or three hours a day through sport, “to separate things: sport and war”. In the beginning it worked quite well, the summer season got off to a great start, she reports, but the longer the war lasts, the more difficult it becomes. “I’m tired of everything,” she says, and there is also a “emptiness” before the competitions. She is now also working with a sports psychologist.
Only recently did the war at home reach her again on her mobile phone. The mother of a national team colleague, high jumper Kateryna Tabashnyk, died in a bomb attack in Kharkiv. On her Instagram channel, Hladijchuk shared pictures that should show the destroyed house. In addition to a medal, Tabashnyk’s start number from a meeting in Paris was also found under the rubble on these recordings. “The whole team mourns”says the pole vaulter.
Until the end of the European Championships in Munich
Of course, she’s thinking about when she could see her entire family again. However, she does not make any plans for this, the war situation remains too uncertain. So she wants to stay in Munich until the end of the European Championships and then take part in another athletics meeting in Germany.
She usually extends the time at the sports festivals to have a roof over her head for a few more days. “You can see the motivation right now”she says: “You’re not motivated to break records. You just need a place to live. It’s not easy.”