Vancouver is over

As the Vancouver winter Olympics went by, I browsed across the National Olympic Committee’s website every day in a hope to see that our athletes have at last climbed onto the podium and received a medal. Unfortunately, there is nothing to be proud of except perhaps for the biathlete Andrii Deryzemlia who finished fourth in the sprint on the very first days of the Olympic Games. Nobody showed a better result. Why Ukraine was so unlucky as to win no medals is perhaps a question not only to athletes and their coaches but also to the government. For sport is severely underfunded in here.

On the other hand, participation in the Olympic Games is always an honor for every athlete irrespective of the result. For it is their lifetime dream to take part in a competition of this level. And some of them finally manage to go into the history of sport as champions, and they are spoken of as role models in children’s sport schools which are perhaps training the next generation of Olympic athletes.

Teenage athletes usually take the example of athletes who are well known not only in Ukraine but also abroad, such as soccer player Andrii Shevchenko, brother boxers Wladimir and Vitali Klitschko, or tennis player sisters Olena and Kateryna Bondarenko. The lion’s share of their success, as well as competition funding, belongs to themselves, not the state. So is it worthwhile for the state to contribute to the image of athletes if some of them can do this on their own? Or is it better to shift the burden to sponsors, who will be interested in promoting and hyping one athlete or another, and thus redirect governmental funds, intended for developing Olympic sport, to mass-scale sport, for example, to make sport societies, skating rinks, etc., free of charge and more accessible? For far from all families can afford to pay over 200 hryvnias a month for their children to attend a sport society.

Incidentally, what is being said about the health of Ukrainians? We are Europe’s leaders in the number of the HIV-infected and those who die of cancer and cardiovascular diseases. Our and foreign demographers always stress that the Ukrainian nation is ageing, mortality exceeds the birth rate, and the population growth rate is low. Then what impression do we make on Europeans if they simply do not hear any other information? Sport achievements are of nobody’s concern in this situation.

Things would perhaps be different if we had a culture of wellness. Can you see many people who jog in the morning at stadiums or running lanes (their quantity and quality is a different issue), or do many of your acquaintances regularly do morning exercises? There must be very few affirmative answers. For this to be a norm, for us to learn to value our health, and, finally, for us to be spoken of as a strong and healthy nation, there must be the propaganda of a healthy lifestyle and, accordingly, adequate funding on the part of the government.