Ukrainian writer Anna Schliakova tells the story of the two Olympic-qualified Ukrainian climbers.

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Two climbers from Ukraine will compete in Paris 2024: Jenya Kazbekova will climb in the Boulder & Lead event, and Yaroslav Tkach will race on the Speed wall. For both athletes, representing their country on the Olympic stage will carry more significance than ever before against the backdrop of Russia's ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 

Whether they remained in their home country or became displaced, Ukrainians have had to learn to cope with the war and to believe in victory. They have hopes, dreams and need support - just like Jenya and Yaroslav in their Olympic journey.

Jenya Kazbekova

"You won't win until you fully believe in it," climbing World Cup winner Serik Kazbekov said ten years ago in my native city of Kharkiv, which Russians have bombed heavily for over two years. Now his daughter Jenya Kazbekova - a third-generation athlete from a competition climbing dynasty - echoes her father's sentiment in our interview. 

Jenya and her family fled the war on the first day of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine and after an exhausting 4-day-long drive to Germany, she returned to training. However, her world had turned upside down. 

"Climbing was the only time when I managed to focus on myself and rest a little bit from constantly updating the news and all the anxiety of the war," she says. "I didn't know what to expect the next day and what to do with all my feelings. I wanted the world to stop so badly and to address the war, but everyone went on living. Life went on. No one stopped. There was a lot of support, but no one left their daily business to do something about the war."

Competing lost its meaning for Jenya. Being drained mentally, she also wasn't able to show the results she expected of herself.

"I didn't know whether I should still be competing when people were dying in Ukraine," she explains. "It was hard to focus on competitions. Nothing felt right anymore. I couldn't enjoy competing when I felt so guilty about being able to leave Ukraine, being safe and having opportunities to train and travel. During the competitions, neither my head nor my heart were there because they were in Ukraine with my friends and family." 

Jenya found someone who understood her without saying a word. Her friend and former Canadian National Team Coach Malek Taleb, originally from Lebanon, became her coach that year.

"I felt that he understood my feelings and my experience," Jenya says. "He left his country at the age of 18 and knows what it's like to live amidst war and try to get back on track. I asked him to be my coach. To my surprise, he agreed. For me, it was a leap of faith as I didn't know if we could work together. I knew that I needed all the professional support I could get if I wanted to have a real chance of qualifying for Paris."

Malek also helped Jenya to redefine her values and to find motivation. Another important conversation took place two weeks before the European Championships 2022.

"He helped me to cope with guilt," she says. "He reminded me that I am a sportsperson with a profile. I can represent Ukraine on a global stage. Every time I come out at competitions in my Ukrainian uniform, I remind the world about Ukraine and the war which isn't over yet. If people care about me, they will care about Ukraine too. The more successful I am, the more often I could do this. It's a great responsibility and pressure which I proudly accept. I provide hope that we won't be forgotten. It helped me to change my mindset completely. 

"Four weeks before the European Championships, I didn't even think I would be able to go there, and when I did, I was able to reach the finals. It was such a big leap for me, which showed me how much I can achieve when I have my values to lean on and when I believe in myself."

After the European Championships, Jenya underwent elbow surgery and returned to competitions in March 2023. After a packed season, she was already exhausted on the eve of the World Championships in Bern, 2023. Jenya was frustrated with her 26th place in the Boulder & Lead combined event and went back to Salt Lake City determined to train for the European Continental Qualifier in Laval France 2023. She knew she had to change her approach to training, communicating openly with Malek about the areas she wanted to work on and how she wanted to go about it, so that they could create a plan together. 

"Physically I was absolutely ready for Laval," she says. "However, I wasn't ready mentally, as I had to win and the pressure was high. I finished fourth, but I felt that I could do better. In the Autumn, I took part in the Red Bull Dual Ascent in Ticino [a multipitch speed competition, coincidentally the same discipline in which Jenya's grandmother had become Soviet champion]. I pushed myself both physically and mentally so close to my limits that I discovered new inner strength. I showed myself what I was capable of. I felt that if I could cope with this, then I could do anything.

"And from that moment on, I was very focused throughout the winter. I knew what I wanted and how much I was willing to work for it. My preparation was very meticulous and on a completely different level physically, but mentally as well. Everything was at a new level: my attitude to training, my mood, my work with injuries, fears, doubts. I realised that I was becoming an athlete I could be proud of."

The Olympic Qualifier Series in Shanghai in May was Jenya's first competition of 2024.

"Before Shanghai, I didn't know where I might finish, I didn't know how strong I was," she says. "I had my fair share of doubts and fears before the event, but at the same time, I had a feeling of readiness because of all the hard work I had put into it. And when I went out I felt that I was in the right place at the right time. I am where I belong."

With a consistent 6th place in Shanghai and an 8th place in Budapest, Jenya finished 6th overall, comfortably earning her place in Paris. But alongside the stress of training and competing, Jenya has one eye on events back home, which put everything into perspective. 

"During these two years of full-scale war, it seems to me that all Ukrainians have adapted so much and learned to live with it," she says. "I learned that I had qualified for the Olympics, and 15 minutes later I saw news about people dying in Kharkiv because a Russian bomb had damaged a residential building. And all this is my life, our life. The war is inseparable from daily life. One day I have a competition, and the next I read news about a rocket which fell very close to the climbing wall in Dnipro. I try to perform and achieve the best possible result, while thinking about my grandparents, who stayed in Dnipro and refused to leave. The worst thing is that this is our normality now. And it's so scary." 

When she signed her ticket to Paris, Jenya wrote: "This is for Ukraine."

"Am I dreaming?!" she shared. "I am still very much processing what happened at the OQS in Budapest. Speechless, overwhelmed and grateful. It means everything to do this with Ukraine in my heart."

Yaroslav Tkach

In Speed Climbing, everything is decided in the blink of an eye, but it takes years of hard work to get there. This year, 28 athletes will try to climb 15 vertical metres in less than 5 seconds to become the first Olympic Champion in Speed Climbing. A Ukrainian, Yaroslav Tkach, is among them. The country has a long history of producing world champions and record-holders in the discipline.

Yaroslav was born and started climbing in the city of Kremenchuk in central Ukraine. After several years of training, he focused primarily on speed climbing at the age of 12. He became determined to reach the Olympics once Speed was announced to be a separate discipline in Paris. Yaroslav qualified for the Summer Youth Olympics in 2018, where he came 11th in the combined competition.

At senior level, Yaroslav went from strength to strength. He won bronze in the World Games in 2022 and in the World Climbing Military Championship in 2023. He was the Ukrainian Speed Climbing Cup winner in 2018, 2019 and 2020.

Training for speed climbing in Ukraine is difficult, as most of the walls are shorter than 15 metres and the standard speed route is often set in separate sections. For a long time, there was only one full standard wall, located in a military school with tricky access. As an outdoor facility, Ukraine's cold climate makes it impossible to train on it year-round.

"Just before the start of the Russian full-scale invasion, a proper speed climbing wall was built in Kyiv," Yaroslav explains. "We had a Ukrainian National Team Camp at the time. I left for Kremenchuk a couple of days earlier. We also travelled to Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast for another training camp. A new speed climbing wall was going to be built there soon… And then the war started. First, I headed to west Ukraine in Zakarpattia. Then, as an athlete, I was allowed to leave the country and went to Poland." 

Despite being displaced, the Ukrainian Speed Climbing Team remains united. Many of the athletes are now based in the Polish city of Bytom, where they train and live together, supporting each other amid the turmoil.

"We don't visit Ukraine often, and if we do, we stay somewhere in Lviv or, maybe, Kyiv, where it's not so dangerous," Yaroslav explains. "We go there for Ukrainian Championships and other competitions, medical tests or sometimes for training. Between all my duties, I come to Kremenchuk as often as I can to see my wife and other relatives who stay there. But some people still train in cities that are under regular bombardment such as Kharkiv, for example."

Like Jenya, Yaroslav found higher purpose in competing. 

"It was hard to accept that such violence was happening," he says. "But I also felt that I should train even harder to win for Ukraine, raise our flag, and remind the world about our resilience. It's very helpful that we have a very strong and close Ukrainian community here in Poland. We train and travel to competitions together. When someone wins, we all sing our anthem together." 

Ukrainian speed climbers continue to show strong results at European and World level despite the circumstances. In 2023 in Zilina, Slovakia, Ukraine swept the podium of the European Cup and will now send two of its athletes to Paris.

In addition to his physical training at the camps, it has taken a lot of mental effort for Yaroslav to stay on top form.

"Before competitions, I try not to overthink, to believe in the training I've done," he says. "I try to do everything as I would normally do in training. I try not to set myself any goals to reduce pressure."

Yaroslav enjoys the diversity of training, which has kept his body and mind busy over the last two years of war. 

"We do lots of athletics training, weightlifting, different kinds of jumps. All together, it allows us to climb fast. It's an all-round development that you don't really see in many other sports," he says.

Yaroslav competed in the IFSC Speed World Cup in Chamonix after clinching his Olympic ticket, making finals and finishing 11th. He feels optimistic and focused on his Olympic goal. He also believes that Ukraine will win a medal. But most of all, he wants to enjoy the experience.

"I've learned an important lesson: it's crucial not to put pressure on myself during competitions and just have fun," he says. "It is the most important thing. If you train only for the sake of training and compete only for the sake of competing, it makes everything much harder. A competition lasts one or two days, while training lasts a whole year. So you have to love what you do and give your 100%."