Will Ukraine have athletes competing in the 2024 Olympics?
Conflict continues between Ukraine and Russia following Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
How will tensions between the two countries impact the 2024 Paris Olympics?
Ukraine will send a team of more than 100 athletes to Paris, and – though that’s fewer than the country had in Tokyo three years ago – their participation will likely feel more significant. The Ukrainian athletes competing at the games have endured a myriad of challenges since Russia’s invasion, including facilities being destroyed, friends and relatives being killed and uncertainty about what the future might hold.
According to Ukraine’s Sports Ministry, about 3,000 athletes – from Olympic and non-Olympic sports – have served for the country’s military, either voluntarily or by being drafted, and 479 have been killed while serving or in civilian life. More than 500 sports facilities have been destroyed, including 15 Olympic training bases.
For Ukrainian hurdler Anna Ryzhykova, each stride on the Paris Olympic track will have meaning far beyond the time she clocks.
Her competitions are no longer strictly an individual battle, but war on a different front. Her goal is not just gold, but also to rivet global attention on her country’s fight for survival against Russia.
“You’re not doing it for yourself anymore,” she says. “Winning a medal just for yourself, being a champion, realizing your ambitions — it’s inappropriate.”
While honing their bodies and skills for Paris, many Ukrainian athletes have wrestled with their consciences. Athletes have had to explain to themselves and others why they are still competing when soldiers are dying and lives being ripped apart. Some are emerging from the journey with their priorities reordered and armed with new motivation to fight, through sport, for the broader national cause.
“Our victories are to draw attention to Ukraine,” Ryzhykova says.
Training when sports facilities have been destroyed
More than 500 sports facilities in Ukraine have been destroyed since the war began in February 2022. That was the year Russian missiles hit the Lokomotiv sports center in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, depriving Ukrainian artistic swimmers of the training venue they used before winning the team bronze medal in Tokyo. The gleaming “Neptune” aquatic center in Mariupol was bombed in the Russian siege of that devastated port city and now the city is under occupation. That ruined the plans of diver Stanislav Oliferchyk to use it as his Olympic training base for Paris.
High jumper Oleh Doroshchuk, aged 23 and one of Ukraine’s brightest prospects in Olympic track and field in Paris, has learned to ignore aid raid sirens that blare over his hometown, Kropyvnytskyi in central Ukraine, so they don’t interrupt his training. Still, after particularly deadly Russian attacks that regularly hit the country, Doroschuk says he’s been forced to look inside himself, questioning whether it’s morally right that he’s “just training” when other men are defending front lines.
“I think everyone has these kinds of thoughts,” he said. “Many people among those whom I know are fighting, and some were killed.”
Among Ukraine’s many tens of thousands of dead and injured are athletes, coaches and others in sports organizations who together helped Ukraine to stand on its own as a sporting nation after it broke free of the former Soviet sports machine.
Some of the athletes killed might have had a shot of qualifying for Paris. Some of the coaches had been nurturing future generations.
Ryzhykova lost a mentor who helped ignite her passion for sports. Coach Valentyn Vozniuk and his wife, Iryna Tymoshenko, were among 46 people killed by a supersonic missile that slammed into an apartment building in Dnipro in 2023.
Vozniuk, who was 75, led the Dnipro sports school where Ryzhykova started track and field and where she still trains on trips home.
“He was always very cheerful, a happy person who did everything to make children come, enjoy, and stay,” she recalls.
She worries the war will accelerate a downward spiral for Ukrainian sport. “Few children are coming for training now, many have left,” she notes.
“There are times when depression and a feeling of not wanting to do anything set in,” she says. “And when you’re at a training camp and read the news about a massive rocket attack, you worry about all your relatives and loved ones.”
Facing Russia in Paris
In Paris, Ukrainian athletes will endure another ordeal: the likelihood of crossing paths with competitors from Russia and ally Belarus.
The International Olympic Committee barred the two nations from team sports in Paris but didn’t bend to Ukrainian pleas for their complete exclusion.
Instead, Russians and Belarusians who pass a two-step vetting procedure will compete individually as neutrals. They must not have publicly supported the invasion or be affiliated with military or state security agencies.
The IOC has said dozens of Russian and Belarusian athletes qualify.
Ryzhykova struggles with the prospect of face-to-face encounters.
“I can’t even imagine this anger,” she says. “How to restrain oneself, how to look at them.”
Her priority remains Ukraine and keeping its losses and sacrifices in the spotlight.
“We cannot be without a position, be on the sidelines — because we are opinion leaders. And we have to be a support for our people,” Ryzhykova says.
“It will be challenging at this Olympics because there is no room for defeat or injury,” she adds. “It’s tough to cope with, but it’s both motivation and responsibility.”
CNN contributed to this story.