Tuesday’s bombing of a sports complex in Dnipro, Ukraine became even scarier for the sport of swimming on Wednesday after European Junior Champion Oleksandr Zheltyakov revealed that he and four other athletes were staying at a hotel in the sports complex when it was hit by a Russian missile.
“The rocket exploded 20 meters from my [hotel] room,” he wrote on Instagram.
“I woke up during the night, because now I have trouble sleeping,” he told Suspilne Sport. “Then I heard the first explosion that happened at the factory. I immediately woke everyone up, and we went to the bunker.
“I went out into the main hall to ask the guard what happened and where. It was at this time while I was inquiring, a missile landed on the “Meteor” (sports complex).
“The hotel we are staying in is closer to the entrance. And the rocket came from the other side, where the parking lot is located. Another 20 meters, and the rocket would have hit the swimming pool. Now one of the sides, that is, the corner part of the sports complex building, is damaged. The remains of the wall got into the pool, we are now cleaning the street and the pool itself. As far as I’m concerned, nothing critical. No one was hurt.”
“There are five of us here – those who competed at the European Youth Championship. We have been training in “Meteor” for a month. In two weeks, we have the end of the season. So far, it is difficult to say when we will be able to resume training in our pool.”
The complex also includes a sports stadium and ice arena and is used as a National Olympic and Paralympic training base.
Zheltakov won European Junior Championships in the 100 and 200-meter backstrokes in July, adding silver in the 50 back. His time of 1:55.79 in the 200 back is under the Olympic “A” standard in the event, qualifying him for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
According to June numbers released by Ukraine Minister of Youth and Sports, as of March 2023, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused damage to 363 sports facilities in Ukraine, at least 95 of which were completely destroyed. A reported 317 athletes and coached from Ukraine had been killed as well.
The pool in Dnipro is where Olympic medalist Mykhailo Romanchuk, among others, trained for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
When my teammate’s house was directly hit and destroyed by a rocket in Israel no one reported it and he swam at Euro Jrs too
How can anyone say that sports is outside of politics. Russia must be banned from all competitions.
Berlin 1936
Moscow 1980
Los Angeles 1984
Seoul 1988
Beijing 2008
Sochi 2014
And that’s just verhy overtly political olympic games, sport and politics have always been tied at the hip.
“Keep politics out of X” is a political statement in itself, one I think begs a slippery slope towards something quite undesirable
One time I was on a team where they didn’t put the bubble on the pool by Thanksgiving.
So I can relate.
How’s Putin?
We are long past the point where the US, NATO, and China should be pushing Ukraine and Russia to the negotiating table.
Push Russia please. Ukraine didn’t attack anyone.
WTAF
why are they still in the country though?
Zheltyakov talked to us about it here: https://staging.swimswam.com/zheltyakov-breaks-another-record-at-euro-juniors-while-training-in-war-torn-ukraine/
It’s a totally nonsense. And this show how this country destroy everything, which can flourish.
Russia for 100 present should be excluded from Olympic Games and other events for such actions.
russia is a terroris state
What military value can come from targeting a sports complex? This nothing more than terror bombing of civilian targets,
The idea is to terrorize the populous in hope that the fear and trauma will make them lose support for the war. It’s not new, both sides did it during world War 2. It didn’t work then, it doesn’t work now, and it’s always been abhorrent.