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A Ukrainian gymnast will compete at the Paris 2024 Olympics with more than just medals on his mind.
Oleg Verniaiev, 30, will join around 140 athletes in the smallest team that Ukraine has fielded for any Olympic Games.
But they enter Paris after the lives of an estimated 488 athletes, and thousands of civilians, have been taken following the Russian invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago.
While the stage is set for the world’s most decorated gymnasts to compete this Saturday, Verniaiev has aspirations, above any personal goals, to remind spectators of the horrors that are taking place in his homeland.
“Of course it’s our first job but every day in my country, people die, animals die, buildings are broken – sport buildings, civilian buildings,” Verniaiev told reporters on Wednesday.
“It’s not possible to explain to you what’s happening, you need to come to understand.”
The fact that Ukrainians are even competing at the Games during wartime is, as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Wednesday, an accomplishment in itself.
Verniaiev, in fact, had a vastly successful Rio Olympics in 2016, winning gold in the parallel bars event and securing a silver medal following the individual all-around final.
However, he enters this Olympics in a completely different headspace, unable to remove the atrocities committed in Ukraine from his mind.
Earlier this month, Verniaiev and his team visited Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital in Kyiv, which had been more or less destroyed by a Russian missile.
Even now, Russia, without providing any sufficient evidence, denies that the damage was caused by them, claiming that their armed forces have not intentionally targeted civilians.
“How can you think about sport, about gymnastics, about competition when you see news like this,” Verniaiev said, “When people tell me it’s about sport, it’s not politics, no, sorry, I don’t agree with this.
“But of course we do our job to the maximum with what we have.”
With Ukraine at the forefront of his mind, Verniaiev will have the opportunity to qualify for both the paralleled bars and individual all-around events on Saturday, with the men’s team final taking place on July 29.
