Bronze medallist Ukraine’s Olga Kharlan celebrates on the podium during the medal ceremony for the women’s sabre individual competition during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at the Grand Palais in Paris, on July 29, 2024. (AFP)
PARIS – Ukraine’s Olga Kharlan may have missed out on the individual Olympic gold medal she craved but she said her bronze in Monday’s sabre final was “really special”, dedicating it to her war-torn country.
The 33-year-old produced a remarkable comeback from 11-5 down to wrest the bronze from South Korea’s Choi Se-bin in front of a crowd containing her mother, sister and nephew — her father is not able to leave Ukraine.
It was Ukraine’s first medal of the Paris Olympics.
Kharlan has been one of the most forthright of the Ukrainian sports stars in speaking out against Russia since the invasion of her country in February 2022.
She told AFP last year that “sports was another frontier” and sportspeople “were fighters” — she showed plenty of that in Paris.
Having summoned up the talent that has brought her multiple Olympic medals and four individual world titles to get across the line, she fell to her knees, kissing the piste.
“It’s really special,” said a beaming Kharlan. “It’s like infinity. It’s special for my country.
“It’s for the people of Ukraine, for defenders (soldiers), for athletes who couldn’t come here because they were killed by Russia.”
Kharlan had been targeting Olympic gold but said “the war ending was her dream” and explained the Paris medal felt different from her other four Olympic medals, including a team gold at the 2008 Beijing Games.
“It’s different,” she said. “We are showing to all the world that we can fight. We don’t give up and I showed it, somehow.”
‘Sacrifices’
Kharlan, who had her hopes of gold dashed in the semi-finals by France’s Sara Balzer, said she had felt the weight of expectation on her shoulders
“I felt the pressure a lot,” she said. “Because you want to do it. You want to do it for your family. You want to do it for yourself.”
She has rarely been home since the invasion, and the first time she went back she had to go to an air raid shelter with her mother in the western city of Lviv.
Kharlan had taken her sister and nephew out of Ukraine at the outset of the war but they later returned.
However, for once it was a happy family moment in the magnificent surroundings of the Grand Palais on Monday.
Kharlan said the medal made up for all the absences from family occasions since the war started.
“I’ve been at home five times probably for one week,” said Kharlan, whose boyfriend, Italy’s Luigi Samele, won sabre bronze on Saturday.
“It’s all the sacrifices. And all the news, all the tragic moments that we had when Russia bombed and killed people.
“We all take it. So that’s why it’s tough.”
Kharlan had thought the fates were conspiring to keep her away from the Paris Olympics when she was disqualified from the world championships last year for not shaking hands with a Russian opponent.
International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach stepped in and awarded her a wild card, though that was not needed in the end as Ukraine qualified as a team.
Bach, an Olympic fencing champion in 1976, was in the crowd on Monday.
“We saw each other, and he said congratulations on it,” she said.
For Kharlan, though, the good omen was that her mother and sister were there — they have been present on both previous occasions she won the individual bronze.
“They are my lucky mascots,” she said.