Daily air raid sirens cannot deter the fighting spirit of Dnipro’s young athletes determined to give their all in Paris
leksandr Zheltyakov gazes across the pool and points towards the hundreds of yellow seats that run along its flank. He has cast his mind back to December 2019, when he was 14 and won his first Ukrainian championship in front of a delighted home town crowd at Dnipro’s Meteor facility.
On that occasion, the damage to Meteor was minimal. Life at the pool continued, with all its wartime doubts and constraints. Families brought youngsters in to use the children’s facilities. The sauna and spa offered a way to relax. Kesil, who had already represented Ukraine at Tokyo 2020, kept working towards a crack at Paris.
This is just one part of a huge Soviet-constructed complex dominated by a crumbling brutalist indoor hall, designed for ice hockey, basketball and concerts, whose renovation has long been a local point of contention. Set slightly back in the woods is a 25,000-capacity bowl of a stadium where Ukraine played a World Cup qualifier against Albania 19 years ago. In 1981, 11 fans at a match between Dnipro and Spartak Moscow were killed there in a crush whose root cause remains shrouded in mystery.
When those world junior championships came around, in the Israeli city of Netanya, Zheltyakov put it all to one side and returned with two more golds. Can anyone else have been forced to prepare like this? For most of the interview it is hard to remember that he will remain a teenager for 16 more months. There are occasional tells, such as when he likens a former coach to a character from the sci-fi cartoon Rick and Morty, but the self-command of someone used to going it alone is obvious.
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