AFTER FORCING a draw from the clutches of defeat in opposition to Poland’s Oliwia Kiolbasa, guaranteeing a gold medal for Ukraine within the Chess Olympiad on Tuesday, Anna Ushenina quietly walked to the facet of the corridor and slumped into the arms of her teammate Natalia Buksa.
There had been no leaps of pleasure or high-fives, simply tears and hugs. When tens of millions again residence, dealing with a brutal Russian invasion, had been fleeing for all times and struggling for meals and shelter, the gold medal — an Olympiad gold no much less — introduced simply fleeting aid.
Later, with a quivering voice and welled-up eyes, Ushenina put the triumph in perspective: “It’s obviously a great feeling, but the medal can’t stop a war.” There was a second of shocked silence as her voice echoed throughout the packed room.
The 36-year-old Ushenina, her nation’s first girls’s world champion, is from Kharkiv, simply 30 miles from the Russia border and one of many closely shelled cities within the invasion. “It was a dreadful time because we were living so close to the border. As soon as we heard the news that the Russians were marching, we had no other option but to flee with our family without any preparations,” she says.
Ukraine is the winner within the girls’s part of the forty fourth #ChessOlympiad! Congratulations! 🏆♟️
📷: Lennart Ootes & Stev Bonhage pic.twitter.com/2SlMqKuJQE
— International Chess Federation (@FIDE_chess) August 9, 2022
The seasoned participant has not gone again residence but. Like most of her teammates. Everyone within the five-member group has a narrative of ordeal to relate. The Muzychuk sisters, Anna and Mariya, made a harrowing escape from Lviv, a metropolis in western Ukraine sharing a border with Poland, from the place they travelled to Germany and Spain.
Although the information of an impending conflict was spreading, the sisters deliberated till the primary day of the full-scale invasion on February 24 earlier than fleeing. “At around seven in the morning I woke up because I heard a siren, which was a bit of a shocker, because you don’t know what’s happening. I immediately picked up my mobile to check the news, and I saw – a disaster,” Anna Muzychuk stated in a podcast on the web site chessbase.com.
The group from Ukraine on the Chess Olympiad in Chennai.
By that point, Kiev was being bombed from Belarus. “They are bombing our ships in the sea. They are invading from the west, through the north, to the south. And then like: ‘oh my God, this is a war, what should we do? Mariya, wake up, listen to the sirens, the war has started, I told my sister’,” she stated.
That night time, with flights halted and trains full, the sisters reached the Polish border in a crammed bus with only a bag and a laptop computer. “We were very sad, because we didn’t want to leave. I love my city and my apartment, and we were leaving everybody behind. Our parents, our grandparents, most of our relatives. They are still in Ukraine,” she stated.
At the border, they needed to look forward to 15 hours in a queue to cross. But she says they had been fortunate as these crossing by bus had particular lanes. “There were people who spent days in the queue,” Anna Muzychuk stated. When the sisters lastly discovered a retailer after crossing the Poland border, they discovered to her horror that almost all of their bank cards had been blocked — luckily one card labored.
The males’s group captain Oleksander Sulypa was getting ready for a chess match in Reykjavik when the conflict struck. He instantly left his household behind and drove to the navy base in Lviv and volunteered to defend his nation. “I did not think twice. I wanted to be part of protecting my country. My job is to monitor the stations and stop cars that drive past it. On an average, we used to search 2,000 cars,” Sulypa instructed The Indian Express.
The 50-year-old didn’t take part in direct fight, however helped seize a whole lot of Russian spies close to the navy camp and airport. “At that time, chess was the last thing in our mind. We did not know we would be alive for the Olympiad and I did not know where the players were, whether they were dead or alive,” he stated, including that if want be, he would return to the warfront once more. “My first duty is to protect my country,” he stated.
There had been others whose homes had been razed, who misplaced pals and family, and who endured shut brushes with loss of life. And but, in Chennai, Ukraine’s girls’s group rose to high the desk on the ultimate day with a hard-fought win over Poland, regardless of drawing to India A and taking a look at one stage as in the event that they had been out of the race.
One of the favourites, Ukraine received off to a breezy begin on this Olympiad, successful their first 4 video games earlier than they stuttered and managed solely attracts. But they bounced again and saved their nerves. Their destiny was not of their fingers and at last, the USA upsetting India gifted them the title. The males’s group, in the meantime, completed twenty ninth.
It was additionally a triumph of collective will, with all members making essential contributions. The Muzychuk sisters — two of Ukraine’s most interesting — racked up 13 out of 20 factors. Ushenina managed 6.5/8 and Nataliya Buska 7/10. Ukraine was not one of the best group however they had been probably the most resolute; they didn’t really feel the stress as a result of that they had seen worse. The backdrop had crammed them with a way of equanimity. Now all they need, as Ushenina stated firmly, “is peace.”
