Athletes compete for war-torn Ukraine
LOS ANGELES — The acting president of Ukraine’s track and field federation logged into the Zoom meeting from his olive-green tent near the front lines, the country’s yellow and blue flag in the background.
Yevhen Pronin wore a camouflage T-shirt, several days’ worth of unshaved beard and a tired smile.
Since the Feb. 24 invasion of Russian forces into Ukraine, in deadly hotspots including Bucha and Irpin, Pronin’s nights are spent flying drones to gather reconnaissance on Russian positions, and his days are used to run his other jobs. By 9 a.m., he checks in remotely with his law office. Then the 31-year-old shifts his thoughts to running his country’s largest sports federation.
When he took over in November on an interim basis, supporting the country’s best runners, jumpers and throwers was more straightforward. Since February, Pronin helped arrange evacuations through Europe for 320 track and field athletes, a number that did not include families or coaches.
In March, he addressed a council of European track and field leaders in Munich. Then it was back to the battlefront, this time in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, tracking Russian troops that had reconvened and fortified their positions.
“I stay here because I know that we will win this war and everything will be OK,” Pronin said. “The question is the price of this victory.”
It’s a victory Pronin and his compatriots seek on two fronts, both militarily and symbolically. In a wounded country, he and other Ukrainian officials and athletes believe there is power in claiming territory, whether around battered cities or atop a track and field awards podium.
“If we win, if our sportsmen can do the interview, can bring up a flag, it’s a good position,” he said. “... I understand that it will be a big emotional signal for all of the world.”
It’s one Pronin and Ukrainian athletes hope to send again this week when the world’s outdoor track and field championships are held in the United States for the first time. Elite international competitions often attempt to frame themselves as safe spaces from politics, but what the world’s track and field fans see inside of Oregon’s Hayward Field will unmistakably reflect the events still unfolding half a world away.
Russian and Belarusian athletes won’t compete after track’s global governing body, World Athletics, barred them from its competitions indefinitely in March. The organization also has created a fund that has covered some living and training costs of displaced Ukrainian athletes, officials and family.
Ukrainian officials are hoping for a repeat of March, when high jumper Yaroslava Mahuchikh won the world indoor championship. Less than a month after she awoke to the sound of shelling in her hometown of Dnipro, and two weeks after fleeing the country during a three-day, 1,200-mile car ride through Moldova and Romania before arriving in Serbia, Mahuchikh cleared 6 feet, 7½ inches to win the world indoor title. Mahuchikh, who had forgotten her spikes when fleeing Dnipro, celebrated by raising the Ukrainian flag over her head to a standing ovation.
“We must focus for our country,” Mahuchikh said. “We protect our country on the track.”
In the early hours of Feb. 24, as Russia began what its government has called a “special military operation,” Pronin went to a bunker and got on the phone.
He called Sebastian Coe, the celebrated former British distance runner and head of World Athletics, and later Dobromir Karamarionov, the president of European Athletics. Pronin had a twopronged plea: to ask that they cut off Russian athletes from competing internationally, and to withhold future competitions from being held in the country.