The final race of the headfirst-sliding sport known as skeleton awaits Ukrainian skeleton athletes Vladyslav Heraskevych and Yaroslav Lavreniuk. After that, they’re going home.
They don’t know what awaits when they get there.
Heraskevych and Lavreniuk are the only athletes from Ukraine competing at the world bobsleigh and skeleton championships that start Thursday and run through next weekend in Lake Placid, N.Y. The house they’re sharing for a few more days is easy enough to find; it’s the one with a giant Ukrainian flag hanging off the porch.
And as a war rages on in their homeland — with tensions right now between Ukraine and the U.S. as high as they’ve been since the Russian invasion three years ago — Heraskevych and Lavreniuk are hoping that just being able to compete and wear their nation’s flag on the world stage brings some moment of joy to the people at home who are able to see it.
“I think every one of us lost some friends at this point,” Heraskevych, who is bidding to compete in his third Olympics next year, said in an interview with The Associated Press. “My classmate was killed by a rocket and it’s really hard. And my relatives are in Ukraine. Every hour, every minute, every alarm, they’re in a big risk to be killed. We have this every day.”
It has been three years of this, and in recent days the situation has seemed even more dire to Heraskevych and Lavreniuk. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was involved in an Oval Office blowup with U.S. President Donald Trump last week; Zelenskyy, in a social media post Tuesday, said that scene was “regrettable” and appealed to Trump by saying his “strong leadership” could help bring peace.
The U.S. has been Ukraine’s biggest military backer since Russia’s full-scale invasion began three years ago. The suspension of that aid by the Trump administration earlier this week was viewed as a major blow by Ukrainians.
Heraskevych and Lavreniuk have watched the news closely in recent days. They say they’re bolstered by the support of athletes from around the world that they compete against, and the village of Lake Placid has a long relationship with Ukraine — so much so that merchants in small shops on Main Street even tell Heraskevych and Lavreniuk that they stand with Ukraine.
It’s not uncommon for the Ukrainian sliders to hear a familiar refrain at the tracks where they compete. “Slava Ukrayini,” someone inevitably says, which translates to “Glory to Ukraine.”
“It is pretty difficult every time you hear this news about some shelling of rockets or drones,” Lavreniuk said. “My sister is in Kyiv and I am so far away. I cannot change nothing or protect my sister, my mother, and you just feel scared for them. You are just hoping that they will be all right. And that’s pretty tough.”
At the Beijing Olympics in 2022, Heraskevych made headlines when he held up a sign reading “No War in Ukraine” immediately after he finished a run down the track. There have been examples of Australian athletes having their fingernails painted in the colours of Ukraine’s flag at the world track and field championships, and even some Russian athletes have called on their homeland to stop the war.
Even in Lake Placid, everyone seems to be rooting for the Ukrainians. The team gets some government assistance, but relies on funding from other nations to get through a season. Some places even have provided free accommodations and ice time for training during race weeks.
“Honestly, I think it’s so inspiring,” U.S. women’s bobsledder Kaysha Love said. “To just see them here … I can’t even imagine what it’s like and I kind of get a little bit emotional thinking about it and just kind of seeing all the things that they went through and then to realize that they’re here doing the same thing that we’re doing, it just kind of puts things into perspective.
“They are fighting for their family, their friends, their country,” Love said. “They’re standing for something. And that in itself is so beautiful.”
There is no track in Ukraine; the team has long considered the track in Sigulda, Latvia, its training base. There is a makeshift training ramp to practice skeleton starts — athletes run along the sled for about 30 feet, then hop on for the ride down the icy chute — built inside a stadium in Ukraine, though the last time Lavreniuk tried to use that place his workout was cut short.
Alarms went off to alert that rockets were incoming. He had to retreat to a bomb shelter.
“It was just supposed to be training,” Lavreniuk said. “And then, the air raid system happened.”
Chance to make history
Ukraine has never won a sliding sport medal — not in luge, bobsleigh or skeleton — at the Olympics. Heraskevych may have a chance at the world championships; he has finished fourth in two World Cup races, one of them at Lake Placid last year. And earlier this season, Ukraine won a World Cup medal in luge, another sliding sport, for the first time in more than 16 years by finishing third in a relay event.
“A very emotional race,” one of Ukraine’s luge athletes, Andriy Mandziy, said that day.
Heraskevych and Lavreniuk will go home — the journey will take about three days, because it’s not easy to get to Ukraine anymore, for obvious reasons — when the season ends. They hope to train. They hope to go into the country’s sport schools and tell the next generation of athletes about what it means to represent Ukraine. They hope to build momentum toward an Olympic season.
Mostly, they just hope their country will be at peace one day soon.
“It’s an extremely difficult time,” Heraskevych said. “At the same time, we try to represent our country in the best possible way on the international stage. We try to compete, we try to be better, and we try to achieve good results and bring some piece of joy for Ukrainians.”