By Kane Wu
PARIS (Reuters) – Ukraine diver Oleksii Sereda opened up on Monday about how hard it was to train during a war after he and Kiril Boliukh finished fifth in the men’s synchronised 10-metre platform event.
The 18-year-old and his teammate, 17, spent most of their time training in Kyiv, while air alerts and shell bombing were part of their daily lives following Russia’s invasion.
“We had a lot of troubles, problems. With like light, for example. We don’t have light in Ukraine, sometimes they turn that off,” he told reporters after the competition.
“Shells are flying about our houses. Every single day we had like air alerts, we had to go downstairs, hide, then go for the training and always like that, always tired,” he said.
Sereda finished sixth in the men’s synchronised and individual 10-metre platform events in Tokyo. In his second Olympics, however, the focus is not always on the sport.
“(In) previous Olympic Games we were talking about our physical conditions, our like training and stuff, but right now we have a war and we’re trying to message to all people, to show everyone that there is a war … to get more help from abroad because we need weapons, we need military things. We are not fighting. We are just trying to defend our country,” he said.
Thoughts of family and country weighed on his performance on Monday. Sereda’s father is a solder in Mykolaiv, he said, and like all other men, could not leave the country as they defend themselves from Russia, which invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Moscow calls its action a “special military operation”.
“I did (a) mistake on the fifth dive – because of my mistake we lost third place. So I’m kind of sad,” he said.
“I was nervous when I was diving there … We have war in our country. I was thinking about my father. I was thinking about what’s going on in Ukraine … for me it’s a bad result.”
Sereda however is looking forward to the individual 10-metre event next week in which he will be competing again.
“I just want to show a great result, show what I can do,” he said. “I want a medal of course but … it’s sports, unpredictable.”
(Reporting by Kane Wu; Editing by Ken Ferris)
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