On February 24, 2022, Oksana Kozyna was supposed to depart with her national team for a para-badminton competition in Spain. Instead, she was woken by the flash and thunder of explosions as bombs rained down on her homeland. Russia had invaded Ukraine.
Her team-mates watched the same lightning forks illuminating the night sky with the same sense of horror.
“I never cry,” says Dmytro Zozulia, Ukraine’s national para-badminton coach, the only one of his kind, speaking at La Porte Chapelle arena in Paris. “But I started to cry every day when it happened.
“It’s impossible to buy food. You have a car but you cannot buy petrol. Children cannot go to school. The scariest thing is we didn’t have bomb shelters. You have to stay at home. Everyone is shocked, panic. It’s like an apocalypse.”
Kozyna, born without a fibula bone, was abandoned by her parents at birth because they did not have the financial means to deal with her disability. They have reconnected since, but the 29-year-old grew up alongside fellow badminton Paralympian Oleksandr Chyrkov in an orphanage in Dnipro, Ukraine, which housed between 60 and 70 disabled children. Chyrkov was hit by a car when he was eight and lay in a hospital bed for two years, during which time his mother only visited twice.
The orphanage, although a home, was not a desirable place to be. It was dirty and stank, but they had a second mother in Svetlana Shabalina, a teacher who cared for the orphans in small ways, sneaking them healthy food now and again.
Just under two decades later, Shabalina made a surprise visit to the 2024 Paris Paralympics to watch, as she describes them, her “kids” competing in the Games. Their lives have been torn apart by war, but badminton has brought them all together.
Encouraged by other coaches in the Paralympic community, Zozulia visited the Dnipro orphanage in the hope of finding disabled people who might want to play badminton.
“It’s not easy to find disabled people in Ukraine,” says Zozulia. He offered them the chance to be coached, change their life and travel around the world.
Chyrkov agreed but on one condition: they could go to McDonald’s. With the support of Ukraine’s Paralympic committee, Zozulia drove them to training, along with trips to the fast food chain, and bought shuttlecocks and racquets. In 2018, they went to their first competition in Dubai to be assessed for their Paralympic classification.
Before the war, Zozulia coached 20 athletes with varying disabilities from wheelchair users to lower limb impairments. When the war started, however, everyone dispersed. “The other 16 are just gone,” he says.
“There’s panic. You don’t know what you should do. Go to the military, be (part of) the Ukraine national team or save your family.”
Zozulia reached out to his friends around the world via email. After four months, he received offers to take his family to Latvia, Estonia, England, the United States or Canada. “But what about the disabled people?” he replied. “They are my children too, I cannot leave them.”
Zozulia was determined to find them somewhere to live and train, so they could continue their pursuit of Paralympic qualification.
“Only France answered,” he says.
Christophe Guillerme, president of badminton club Wambrechies Marquette in northern France and another supporter in Paris, helped the coach, his wife, three children and four future Paralympians — Kozyna, Chyrkov, swimmer Anton Kohl and discus thrower Zoia Ovsii — flee Ukraine, find accommodation and a place to train in Quesnoy-sur-Deule, 20 kilometres (12 miles) from Lille. They now live all under one roof in a large house.
The war had stopped them from competing and, therefore, from gaining the ranking points needed to qualify for Paris. But Guillerme bought them the plane tickets to their first badminton tournament — in Canada in May 2022 — since the war started.
The power of sport cannot be underestimated.
Kozyna, the 2022 para-badminton SL3 world champion, the first Ukrainian to hold that title, says she feels “different” when she plays.
“I’m learning how to be calm and strong,” she says, her eyes glancing at the TV screens showing ongoing matches. “I need it for life, all different situations, not just on the court.”
“It’s not easy,” adds Zozulia. “If a child doesn’t have parents, it’s like no one cares about them. They don’t have control (over) themselves. It’s up to me to teach them. Mentally she goes up and down, always. She loses three points, she wins three points. It’s panic, drama and then victory.
“When she plays badminton she’s like a normal person. I want to cry because I remember the time I saw her homeless and now she’s a person. She has changed.”
Kozyna and Chyrkov’s teacher Shabalina, who has known them since they were 11, could already sense their leadership skills and competitive spirit from a young age. She recalls Kozyna being, in her words, “a manager, a boss” in class while Chyrkov tended to do things by himself.
Fast forward nearly two decades and their lives have taken different paths.
At the start of 2024, Shabalina was diagnosed with cancer and, because of the chaotic state of hospitals caused by the war, could not receive the medication attention she needed. She managed to get to Uppsala, a city near Stockholm, Sweden, to undergo chemotherapy.
When flicking through social media one day she came across a post from Chyrkov, 28, who by chance was on a training camp in the same town. They had not seen each other since before the beginning of the war in 2022 but, over the last couple of months, the 2023 European Championship silver medallist and his former teacher would meet on Sundays and eat together, reflecting on how their lives had changed.
It was around the dinner table that Chyrkov asked Shabalina to come and watch the Paralympics.
While Ukraine’s military defends their country, these athletes are battling on the court and are fully aware of their responsibility. They have received well wishes from friends from all around the world.
“I want to say thank you to those people,” says Chyrkov, dressed in the team’s bright yellow tracksuit with a blue zip, the colours of Ukraine. “When I’m reading that every single time, it is like a double responsibility. Not just be in the competition, but to fight, to win for all the people in Ukraine, to represent Ukraine and shout: ‘Glory to Ukraine’.”
When war broke out, their long-time physiotherapist, Mykhailo Kyslyi, decided to fight. Despite being on the front line, every morning he texts Chyrkov asking him what time they are playing and pesters them to send a video link.
“Every single time I go on the court, I want to show everyone who took care of me — my school, my orphanage, my teacher — who helped me in the first steps of my life,” Kozyna, whose younger brother is in the military, says. “They are the reason I’m here today.”
Chrykov won one and lost two of his group stage SL3, including a defeat to Great Britain’s world No 1 Daniel Bethell, meaning he did not progress to the knockout stages.
But on Friday, Kozyna came from a set down and saved two match points at 19-20 and 20-21 to defeat Manasi Joshi of India to earn her place in the knockout stages. In the quarter-final she then edged out No 2 seed Haline Yildiz in the deciding set, winning 26-24.
Kozyna kissed her necklace and pointed to the sky. “I was asking God to give me this opportunity,” she says. “He knows how hard it was to go all the way through this competition. He gave me more than I could imagine, this opportunity to represent my country, my Ukraine.”
Unbeknown to Kozyna, watching on in the stands of La Porte Chappelle arena in Paris was also her former school teacher whom she had not seen for four years.
“I have never felt something like this,” says Shabalina who affectionately touches Kozyna’s hand. “I was worried, living all these emotions with them. I felt their every step here in Paris.”
“I didn’t recognise her at first,” smiles Kozyna who says Shabalina is like a mother to her. “I was so surprised and happy to see her.”
In the semi-final, Kozyna lost against the No 1 seed Qonitah Ikhtiar Syakuroh of Indonesia. Her opponent embraced her before whipping up the crowd to show their appreciation for the Ukrainian athlete. Kozyna was desperate to win a medal and knew how big an opportunity it was to represent Ukraine.
“Every winner is like a hero because there is a huge motivation for everyone in Ukraine at this hard time,” she says.
Kozyna lost to third seed Nigeria’s Mariam Eniola Bolaji in her bronze medal match on Monday. When asked before the game if she had received any messages from Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, she said: “To get some messages from President Zelensky, I think I should win something first.”
Despite the on-court defeats, Kozyna and Chyrkov have won on so many other levels.
Source: The Athletic
