The 24th Winter Olympic Games-2022 will start in Beijing on February 4. The competition will last until February 20, when the official closing ceremony will take place.
At the Olympics in the Chinese capital, 45 athletes from Ukraine will compete for awards in 12 sports. Our representatives will not be present only in three sports: speed skating, hockey and curling.
In total, during the years of independence, Ukrainians have won eight different awards at the Winter Games: three gold, one silver and four bronze.
ICTV facts suggests remembering our Winter Olympic champions and medalists, who in different years gave us incredible emotions thanks to their performances.
Oksana Bayul (gold)
- Lillehammer-1994: Figure skating
It was Bayul who won the first Olympic gold for Ukraine in the history of Ukraine’s independence. During the Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, she was only 16 years old.
At the Games Oksana performed one of the best short programs in the history of figure skating to the music of Pyotr Tchaikovsky. The first part was lyrical, decorated with an elegant combination of spirals, the second part turned out to be very emotional, stormy. After the short program, Bayul was second, behind American Nancy Carrigan.
During the free program, Bayul changed the number at the end and performed the double axel — double sheepskin cascade 15 seconds before the end. Four of the nine judges gave the victory to Carrigan, four more – Bayul. Everything was decided by the German judge Jan Hoffmann, who brought Oksana to the first place.
Photo: Getty Images
A curious thing happened during the award ceremony. The raising of the Ukrainian flag had to wait 45 minutes – because the organizers did not have the anthem of Ukraine. The organizers offered to put either the anthem of the USSR or the Russian Federation, or the Olympic anthem instead, but the Ukrainian delegation refused. One of the delegates of the Ukrainian figure skaters in the hotel had a cassette with the Ukrainian anthem, so they rushed there to get it. After all, that day the Ukrainian anthem was played for the first time at the Olympics.
Julia Jima, Vita Semerenko, Valentina Semerenko, Elena Pidgrushnaya (gold)
- Sochi 2014: biathlon, relay race
At the Sochi Olympics, the Ukrainian women’s biathlon team won the first gold medal for Ukraine in the relay race at the Games.
At the first stage, Vita Semerenko ran for Ukraine, after the first shooting, she took the lead together with Russian Yana Romanova. In the second shooting, she made one mistake, but reached the distance of the second, and was third on the relay.
Julia Jima performed at the second stage. After the first shooting, she went to the first distance without a miss, and after a clean second shooting, she passed the baton as a leader. Valentina Semerenko ran third. After the first shooting, she held the lead, but the second one did not work out, and she needed three additional cartridges. However, Valentina Semerenko passed the baton to Elena Pidgrushnaya first.
Photo: Getty Images
The captain of the Ukrainian national team shot the first shooting with one additional cartridge and went to the distance from the border with a separation from the Russian Vylukhina. Pidgrushnaya shot the second shooting without a miss and went to the distance as the leader, winning gold medals.
Alexander Abramenko (gold)
- Pyeongchang 2018: freestyle, acrobatics
At the Winter Olympics in South Korea, freestyle skier Alexander Abramenko won the first and only gold medal for Ukraine. This is the first gold for Ukraine in freestyle in history.
In the superfinal of the ski acrobatics competition, Alexander performed a Back Full-Full-Double Full jump and scored the best total of points — 128.51, ahead of Chinese Jia Zunyan and Russian Ilya Burov.
Photo: Depositphotos
Thanks to Abramenko’s gold, Ukraine took 21st place in the unofficial medal standings.
Elena Petrova (silver)
- Nagano-1998: Biathlon
Biathlete Elena Petrova became the only Ukrainian woman who was able to climb the podium of the Olympics in the Japanese city of Nogano.
Petrova won Olympic silver in the 15 km individual race, losing only to the representative of Bulgaria Ekaterina Dafovski.
Photo: NOC
Petrova is one of the most titled Ukrainian biathletes. In addition to silver in Nogano, she is a multiple medalist of the World championships, as well as a multiple champion and medalist of the World Cup stages.
Valentina Tserbe
- Lillehammer-1994: Biathlon
If Bayul won the first gold at the Games in the history of Ukraine, then Cerbe became the first to bring an Olympic medal to the piggy bank of Ukraine.
As Zerbe herself recalled in an interview, this“the reward was received in spite of, not because of”” The athlete had to perform on someone else’s skis, without a personal trainer, translator and masseur.
Photo: NOC
The biathlete won the bronze medal in the 7.5 km sprint with two firing lines, losing to Canadian Miriam Bedar and Belarusian Svetlana Paramigina.
Lilia Efremova
- Turin 2006: Biathlon
The athlete won a bronze medal at the Turin Olympics in the 7.5 km sprint race . She was second only to France’s Florence Baverel-Robert and Sweden’s Anna-Karin Olafsson.
Photo: Getty Images
This medal of a Ukrainian woman of Chuvash origin can be considered rather a surprise. After all, before the podium in Turin, Lilia had never been on the podium, demonstrating rather modest results at the World Cup and World Championships.
Elena Grushina and Ruslan Goncharov
- Turin-2006: figure skating
This was the third Olympics for the Grushin—Goncharov pair, and the Games in Turin were supposed to be the last big start in the figure skaters’ careers.
Photo: Getty Images
After the mandatory program, the Ukrainian duo took fifth place, but after the original dance and the free program, Grushina and Goncharov took bronze. In order to overtake the American duo Babe — Agosto, they lacked 22 hundredths of a point.
Vita Semerenko
- Sochi 2014: Biathlon
Vita Semerenko’s bronze medal was the first for the Ukrainian national team at the 22nd Winter Olympics in Sochi. The Ukrainian woman took the award in a 7.5 km sprint race .
Photo: Getty Images
Her result was 21.7 seconds behind the result of gold medalist Anastasia Kuzmina from Slovakia. Olga Vilukhina of Russia won the silver medal.
