Ukraine gymnasts eye Paris 2024 success with precious handmade flag in tow
Coach Iryna Gorbacheva clutched an embroidered Ukrainian flag to her chest, watching on as her nation won the European team title on the last day of the men’s artistic gymnastics competition in Rimini in April.
With tears threatening to spill over, Gorbacheva smiled as she heard her nation’s anthem for the third time in the five-day competition in Italy, additionally proud because two more of those precious moments came courtesy of her own gymnast, Illia Kovtun, who had also claimed gold on parallel bars, and high bar.
Alongside Nazar Chepurnyi, Igor Radivilov, Radomyr Stelmakh and Oleg Verniaiev, the team amassed a total of 255.762 points, edging past Great Britain on the final apparatus, the high bar.
The quartet watched on, arms linked, as Kovtun, the newly crowned European champion on the apparatus, produced a final high-scoring routine, to pip the Brits to the gold medal, with home nation Italy winning bronze.
This was Ukraine’s second ever men’s European team title.
Their first came in 2020, but two years later, Russia invaded Ukraine, resulting in challenging times including gymnasts training in safer areas overseas, such as Kovtun being hosted in Croatia.
The pair's appreciation for the help from club Sokol Osijek, is revealed in an Instagram post picturing Gorbacheva and Kovtun heading back to the gym with three European gold medals in hand.
Posting both nation's flag emojis side by side, the accompanying caption read: "Unlimited sincere gratitude to all our Croatian friends for all the chances and opportunities, for love, care, trouble, help, support, overtime humanity, sincerity and authenticity!!!"
It is here they will stay in the lead up to the Olympic Games Paris 2024, starting 26 July.
Before then, however, the team has two FIG World Challenge Cup events at which to hone their craft ahead of the XXXIII Olympiad.
Accompanying them will no doubt be the unique national flag, featuring elaborately stitched flowers, which came courtesy of a Ukrainian woman, explained Gorbacheva to Olympics.com at the Europeans, who had handmade the flag especially for Kovtun to wish him luck and help the team to win.
It worked, and the gymnasts will be hoping for more of the same at the FIG World Challenge Cup in Varna, Bulgaria (23-26 May) and Koper, Slovenia (30 May-2 June), before the special gift travels with them to the biggest showcase of them all in France's capital in just more than two months' time.
Ukraine's men's gymnasts have Paris 2024 in sight
Ukraine's men have obtained a quota for a five-person team for the XXXIII Olympiad, to be selected by the National Olympic Committee in due course, but the quintet at the Europeans will be hoping to be in the frame after their successful outing in Italy.
If, as expected, Kovtun is one of those picked, the 20-year-old from Cherkasy certainly has podium potential. The Tokyo 2020 Olympian is a World silver and bronze medallist in the all-around competition – in 2023 and 2021 – respectively, but he could also challenge on his specialist apparatus, the parallel bars.
An operation on his leg in December 2023 curtailed full fitness in Italy but Kovtun is on the start list for the second of the World Cups, no doubt to hone his form ahead of a second Olympic Games.
"The main objective at the Olympic Games is to represent his country and his family, his people, supporting and inspiring the armed forces of Ukraine towards the most important victory for your country," said Gorbacheva in a joint interview with her charge in April.
"Of course, Illia's main goal is also to perform as well as possible and showing his maximum. For me, as his coach, the main objective is to get Illia in his best physical condition and help him as much as possible to get a team medal, individually and on some apparatus."
Radivilov is renowned for his explosive vaults, claiming four World medals on the apparatus with two silver and two bronze. The 31-year-old from Mariupol competed at the 2012, 2016 and 2020 Olympic Games with one bronze medal on vault in London his best result.
Following the team gold in Rimini, Radivilov told Olympics.com: "I am very proud that I am part of this team and I hope that we can fight for team medals in Paris.
"There is a great amount of work by the athlete behind each medal and each award, and any medal, of any level, is always very nice. It's the fruit of your labour, so each of my medals, whether it with a team or an individual one, makes me, first of all, remember the work that I have done to get it, how much I have overcome and endured. And when you're standing on the podium, it is worth it, so of course I am very happy, and I hope this is not my last medal."
Eighteen-year-old Stelmakh, meanwhile, was stunned with his first senior international medal.
"For me, this is something special because I'm so young," he told us. "I don't believe this right now. Maybe tomorrow I'll realise I'm European champion."
The youngster from Zaporizhzhia has top level experience at a junior level, winning individual all-around gold at the European Youth Olympic Festival in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia in 2022.
"All of my team are really happy," agreed Chepurnyi, 21, who participated in the Summer Youth Olympic Games Buenos Aires 2018 claiming silver on vault, before adding three gold and one silver at the European Youth Olympic Festival 2019 in Brussels. He backed up that early promise with a World bronze on vault in 2023, replicating the feat in Rimini.
And when asked how he felt hearing his national anthem on the podium, Kovtun spoke for them all: "I hope it helps our people in Ukraine, to have a little bit of a good mood, to have a victory."
- As National Olympic Committees have the exclusive authority for the representation of their respective countries at the Olympic Games, athletes' participation at the Paris Games depends on their NOC selecting them to represent their delegation at Paris 2024.
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