Twenty-eight Ukrainian athletes will be racing the Charles this year, as guests of the Regatta and its sponsors, as announced earlier this month.
Sixteen of them raced at the recent Racice Worlds and the group also includes a Youth Four and Youth Double, in addition to their Men's and Women's Champ Eights
Their group started the week with a practice row on Thursday and a reception dinner, and row2k caught up with Ukraine's two-time Olympian Olena Buryak, who will row the 3 seat of the Women's Eight, and longtime stroke of the UKR Men's Four Dmytro Hula, who will row the 5 seat of the Men's Eight.
Buryak called it an honor to be invited to compete at the Charles this year:
"The war goes on, but we can represent our country, our flag here, to remind people that we are strong, we are alive, and we are brave. We try to tell people that they have to be brave like Ukraine."
Hula agreed, saying, "It's a great honor to be here, to be invited here to participate and to do something for our country that we can do."
"The main thing is going on the battlefield, of course. On the front, people do an extraordinary job; they sacrifice a lot, but here, we can at least do something to help our country and help those people."
Both echoed the sentiments we heard from Ukrainians at the World Championships: that the opportunity to compete, to fly the Ukrainian flag at these events, means the chance to help keep Ukraine and the war top of mind in the wider world community.
"In other countries, people start maybe a bit to forget about the war," said Hula, "because new news appears. But in Ukraine, we are constantly reading about our people, our country and what happens there."
"We never forget about it, we think about it every every minute. So it's important that people here also remember, because the war hasn't stopped and it has even gotten a bit worse in terms of how it is not just on the battlefield: now we see more of the terrorist attacks of the Russian troops because they have no success on the battlefield. They tried to attack our infrastructure, our power plants, and to kill our people, civilians. So we have to remember about the war, and we have to remember that Russia is a terrorist state."
The generosity of the rowing community--on full display here in Boston for these 28 athletes and coaches--is helping these Ukrainians do what they can to spread this awareness.
Buryak, who herself found refuge in Poland and a training partner--Agnieszka Kobus-Zawojska--she could race with on the massive stage that is the at the Henley Royal Regatta in July, says it is the entire world rowing community that has kept these Ukrainians rowing and racing, which included World Rowing's fundraising to pay for the Ukraininian team at the 2022 Worlds
"It's very important for us," Buryak said of that support, "because Ukrainian rowers are now all over the world. In Ukraine, we have no rowing now because equipment was destroyed, rowing places are destroyed. So we're very thankful that a lot of companies and a lot of people try to help us as much as possible."
For Race Director Fred Schoch, the chance to support Ukraine and these athletes was an opportunity he jumped at, and threw the entire resources of the regatta behind, even enlisting sponsors like Delta Airlines for flights and Cambridge, USA, the local tourism office, for hotel rooms.
"The beauty of our sport, is that it transcends politics," said Schoch. "When we had an opportunity to do something great for these athletes who are such role models and heroes in our eyes, the whole rowing community, or the whole head of the Charles community that said, let's go for it."
The coach at Riverside Boat Club, Andrii Ivanchuk, got the ball rolling with HOCR's Brendan Mulvey, according to Schoch:
"The magic occurred when Brendan Mulvey, my race director, reached out to Andrii Ivanchuk, to see if the Ukrainian team would be interested in coming--not knowing what the war had wrought in terms of their availability, whether they were training for the worlds and so on."
Mulvey remembers the whole effort starting over a coffee with Ivanchuk.
"Andrii said he had been in touch with some coaches that were coaching some of the juniors and so we connected with them, and it took off from there. I evolved into reaching out to the national team coaches and, through a lot of shuffling and visa letters and finding out where everyone was training, started coming together."
Assembling the group had its challenges, beyond just finding them transport to the Charles.
"They've all been training in different areas," said Mulvey, "and a little bit of the challenge was who would have everything that they even would need to travel internationally and get visas to the United States. It even came down to getting permission for the senior team athletes to be allowed to leave Ukraine, because they're of age to be drafted into the Army.
"We actually had one of the youth athletes get their visa on Tuesday, for a Wednesday flight. So we're really excited and happy that it all worked out."
"It took Delta about four hours to say yes to providing free airfare," said Schoch. Then, he said, the local corporate sales rep for Delta, Barbarba Tasho went a step further:
"She sent Good luck notes and Ukrainian flags over to the airports that they were embarking on, so they had a note and a flag on their seat when they got on the plane. Then she met them at the airport here when they arrived."
For the Ukrainian athletes--apart from a reception dinner Thursday night, they are here to race, so naturally row2k asked them, "Will you be fast?"
"Hopefully," laughed Hula, "we will see."
"And have you rowed the course yet," was our follow-up:
"We tried," said Buryak, smiling "It was our first time and we have a coxswain who only speaks English, but not all the team speaks English, and it's a little different phrases. So there was a lot of, 'What did she say? I don't know.' But we will try to do this. We will do one more practice and I think it will be much better."
For Mulvey, bringing the Ukrainians to Boston just made sense, given the regatta's gravitational pull every fall.
"I think we're at the crossroads of the rowing community and it all kind of flows through Boston," he told row2k. The ability to do this kind of outreach, to welcome these Ukrainians with such overwhelming support, he said, "just speaks to the prestige of our event, that we can have that place in our sport and in the world."
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