Ukraine twins smiling through bombs to go for Olympic gold

KYIV – As synchronised swimmers, Maryna and Vladyslava Aleksiiva are used to having to smile no matter what.

The sunny sisters are one of Ukraine’s best hopes of a gold medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics after winning a team bronze in artistic swimming at the Tokyo Games in 2021.

But the trials the 22-year-old twins have been put through – forced to flee their homes, surviving shelling and sleeping in bomb shelters – have tested even their stoicism.

They even had to jump out of the pool and “run to the basement in wet swimsuits” when the explosions got too close, Maryna said.

But the bombardments have not stopped them from returning to their hometown of Kharkiv to prepare for the Games, even if the windows of their training pool are still broken from missile attacks.

“Everything has been bombed – our pool, where we started training, our school, our city centre,” added Maryna.

While the Ukrainian army eventually pushed the Russian troops back, Kharkiv is still vulnerable, only 30km from the border. Last week, 18 people were killed in the

latest wave of Russian missile attacks on several Ukrainian cities.

It is not exactly the ideal environment for elite swimmers to go for gold, especially when there is no generator to warm the water when the power fails.

“When the war started, we did not know what to do,” said Vladyslava, the shyer of the two, who often lets Maryna finish her sentences. “But then we understood our main goal could be to show courage all over the world in competitions.”

“To show Ukraine is still alive,” Maryna added. “We must show strength.”

With the Russians threatening to take the city in the early days of the war, the sisters fled Kharkiv with the rest of Ukraine’s artistic swimming team and trained in Italy for six months. But they were determined to go back to Ukraine to be closer to their parents, training in Kyiv and “sleeping at night in the corridor of a bomb shelter” before returning to Kharkiv.

They have not left their home city since then, except for short trips abroad to compete.

Even if it is more dangerous, “it’s much better to be together, (even) without electricity and music to train”, Vladyslava said during the World Aquatics World Cup in France last May when they won the duet free gold.

They visited Montpellier’s historic centre to eat ice cream and post stories on Instagram to celebrate. But even in those carefree moments when they joked about the joys of having electricity, the war was never far away.

The sisters struck a more sombre note in July at the World Aquatics Championships in Fukuoka, Japan.

“It is hard to focus when your country is at war and you are away from family,” Vladyslava admitted. “We have friends who are sportsmen who died on the battlefield defending our country... it is an awful time for us.”

Every morning in Kharkiv they read the news to see if it is safe to train, and only going to the bomb shelter when it is really dangerous.

The last qualifying rounds for the Olympics are at the Doha world championships in February, with the team building up for the European Aquatics Championships in June, a dress rehearsal for the Games the following month.

Russia will not be competing at the Olympics after its teams were

banned over the invasion.

But individual Russian athletes who have not taken a strongly pro-war stance will be able to do so.

The sisters have spoken out, saying it was “maybe better to not allow a terrorist country (to participate)”.

A medal in Paris would be the ultimate riposte to their Russian competitors who messaged them in the first days of the invasion telling them: “Don’t worry, we will save you... it’s a safety operation.”

“You’re crazy,” Maryna replied. “I invite you to Kharkiv and you will see how my hometown is now... everything has been bombed.” AFP