A report in the Guardian tells how Oleksandr Zheltyakov was fourteen years old in December 2019 when he won his first Ukrainian championship in front of a packed hometown crowd at Dnipro’s Meteor swimming facility. To this day the memory of cheering supporters filling the stands fires him up. He likened it to being at a Taylor Swift concert.
In July 2024 the soundtrack changed. Air raid sirens blared out several times a day at this famous venue which served as one of the main training bases for Ukraine’s Olympic swimmers.
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Most of the arena’s huge windowpanes are cracked, some taped over, others replaced by non-matching materials. The hope is no more Russian rockets land nearby.
In March 2023 the city of Dnipro was again under heavy Russian attack and Zheltyakov was in the middle of a training session. The damage was minimal, but the shockwave from a nearby missile had rippled through the water in the pool and scared the swimmers into taking shelter.
Olympian Denys Kesil, a butterfly specialist swimming practice laps in a distant lane, was startled in mid-stroke. He heard a sound, felt the water shake and knew he had to get out of the pool. Debris was flying around and outside everything looked black.
This time damage to the Meteor facility was minimal. Even amid wartime the pool was still being utilized for training, family recreational activities and for children’s swimming. Kesil, who had represented Ukraine at Tokyo 2021 and Zheltyakov, European 200m backstroke champion in June 2024, were intent on preparing themselves for the 2024 Paris Games, not allowing a relatively near miss to stop them achieving their ambition.
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Their attitude is to keep swimming and training and carry on with their lives which, for Ukrainians in the third year of an unprovoked war, means aside from helping family and friends in need it is business as usual.
The second missile hit in August 2023, a month after Zheltyakov had won European junior gold medals in the 100m and 200m along with qualifying for Paris 2024. However, he still had the world juniors ahead of him and he was stressed over worrying about training and meeting his coach’s challenging demands.
He was staying in the Meteor’s dormitory rooms along with some teammates for the pre-championships’ buildup even though his family home is not far from Dnipro. The explosion they all heard was a direct hit on a nearby industrial facility. While everyone in the building sped off to the shelter, another rocket fell about 50 feet from the pool, with parts of the ceiling falling to the ground. Emotions were high, knowing the next rocket could mean death.
The pool is only one part of a vast Soviet-era complex overshadowed by a crumbling ugly indoor hall which was designed for hockey, basketball and concerts which has been due for renovation for quite some time. Further back in the woods is a 25,000-capacity bowl of a stadium where Ukraine played a World Cup qualifier against Albania in 2005.
Three persons were injured when the pool was attacked, there were no fatalities, but sheets of glass blew inward, the ground caved in, a ceiling was destroyed, and the pool was rendered unusable by falling glass, concrete, plater and debris from the sinkhole outside.
Coaches and athletes spent a full day cleaning the pool while a nearby factory burned. Divers from a local group assisted in dealing with some 6,000 cubic meters of water. Dirt was collected and removed by hand.
The following day saw the swimmers already training once again in the lanes farthest away from the windows. The water was still filthy, but there was nowhere else to go.
In Netanya, Israel at the world junior championships in September 2023, Zheltyakov somehow captured two more gold medals despite the trials and tribulations he experienced in his training regimen at the age of eighteen.
Most of his childhood friends have drifted away from swimming, often leaving him to practice by himself in Meteor. It is possible this newfound independence helped him react responsibly during times of danger. He claims he feels 3-5 years older and, as a sportsman, needs to develop himself from within.
At the end of 2023 on December 29th, Meteor suffered yet again when another explosion blew out more windows. This resulted in the pool being closed for 12 days, as training with freezing winter air blowing in was not possible, even for Ukraine’s brazen resilient swimmers.
The Meteor is one of the more high-profile of the 518 sports facilities damaged or destroyed by Russia since February 2022. Nineteen of those have in the Dnipro region, including a 25-meter (85-foot) pool in the south of the city, where Kesil trained in his teens. Children continue to swim and splash there beneath yet more patched-up windows.
Zheltyakov wants to give back and ensure today’s Ukrainian swimming hopefuls have the means for future development. In partnership with his mother, he has established a charity to support displaced minors from the Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine to develop their well-being through the sport of swimming. “Swimming without Cordons” has a goal of simply giving opportunities for others to thrive.
In late 2023, Zheltyakov along with Yaroslava Mahuchikh, was named Ukraine’s Sportsman of the Year by the country’s National Olympic Committee. Despite all the upheaval he has experienced, the young man has achieved exceptional results, highlighted by his stunning gold medal win at the 2024 European Aquatics Championships in June. He is a special talent – the teenager who cleaned debris from a pool is becoming a young man who is stunning the world.
Becoming an Olympian is a phenomenal accomplishment for him, his family and his club, but before France’s Paris Games it was only the start of his journey. Qualifying was merely the first stage of hopefully several more to come.
Zheltyakov and Kesil are two of five Ukrainian swimmers competing at La Defense Arena, proudly representing their war-torn nation at the 2024 Summer Olympics. Paris is very different from Meteor, which will unfortunately be forced to remain in its present state before it receives its expensive renovation. The facility needs to recapture its structural integrity so Ukraine’s next generation of swimmers can perform heroics there, following the likes of Oleksandr Zheltyakov.
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