“Oleksandr Usyk, the national wrestling team and coach Nikishin became the laureates of the large-scale survey”, — write: sport.ua
At the first stage of the plebiscite, the circle of candidates in each of the nominations was determined by observers of the Sport.ua editorial office. From the list we created, fans and experts chose, in their opinion, the best. Experts named the three best. Each first place was worth 5 points, second – 3, third – 1. The votes of site visitors were added up. About 6,000 users took part in the vote. The winners of the fan survey received 30 points to the general fund, the athlete/coach/team who took the second place – 20 points each, the third – 10 points.
By making the referendum so multifaceted, we expected to obtain the most objective results. However, now that everything is over, we are discussing the fairness of the results even among ourselves. After all, everyone has their own motives and sympathies. The choice has been made and its results will be written down in the history of our mass media and Ukrainian sports in general.
Please note that our survey included 12 Olympic champions, two sports ministers/presidents of the National Olympic Committee of different years, a two-time NBA champion, world champions, Olympic medalists, outstanding coaches and famous officials. The list of surnames (Borzov, Turishcheva, Merleni, Gutzait, Ruban, Pidhrushna, Shemyakina, Cheban, Osypenko-Radomska, Beleniuk, Kravatska, Zantaraya, Silantiev, Petrova and others) speaks for itself.
But in the end, in one of the nominations, it was the people’s choice that had a decisive influence on determining the laureate. We are talking about the athlete of the year. According to the results of the experts’ vote, the four-time world rowing champion Lyudmila Luzan seemed to be in the clear lead. But, according to our Internet experts, Lyudmila’s achievements are not enough to give her a place at least in the top three. Luzan did not receive a single point from the fans, and the boxer Oleksandr Usyk won, and these 30 points in the sum of experts’ votes turned out to be enough to overtake all competitors and become the best according to Sport.ua for the third time (our readers voted for Oleksandr for the first time in 2012, when he became the champion of the London Olympics, and for the second time – in 2022, when he won for the second time Anthony Joshua).
In 2025, Usyk had only one fight – he knocked out British Daniel Dubois in the fifth round and became the absolute heavyweight world champion for the second time in his career. Alexander is now 38 years old, and in terms of height, he is definitely on the same level as his idol Muhammad Ali or somewhere close to it.
We should add that, apart from Usyk, no one else has been named the best athlete of the year by Sport.ua three times. To date, judoka Daryna Bilodid and track and field athlete Yaroslava Maguchih have received two such recognitions on a level with Oleksandr.
The best athletes of the year according to Sport.ua
- 2010 – Vitaliy Klitschko
- 2011 – Volodymyr Klitschko
- 2012 – Oleksandr Usyk
- 2013 – Bohdan Bondarenko
- 2014 – Valentina Semerenko
- 2015 – Oleg Vernyaev
- 2016 – Yuriy Cheban
- 2017 – Vasyl Lomachenko
- 2018 – Elina Svitolina
- 2019 – Daryna Bilodid
- 2020 – Daryna Bilodid
- 2021 – Zhan Beleniuk
- 2022 – Oleksandr Usyk
- 2023 – Yaroslav Maguchih
- 2024 – Yaroslav Maguchih
- 2025 – Oleksandr Usyk
The best team of 2025 was the women’s wrestling team of Ukraine, which demonstrated the best performance at the European Championships in history: 4 gold, 4 bronze, only two weight categories out of ten did not have medals, the first overall team place.
Coach Volodymyr Yaremenko, who used to be Iryna Kolyadenko’s sole personal mentor, helped her win two Olympic medals, and became the head of the national team in general only since the beginning of the past year, is an obvious merit in this result. Therefore, no one was surprised if, along with the team, the coach was recognized as the best.
But thanks to the experts’ vote, the coach of the women’s epee fencing team, Bohdan Nikishyn, became the Coach of the Year. Under his leadership, Ukrainian women won the European team championship, and Vlada Kharkiv became the world champion in the individual championship. It is interesting that neither Nikishyn nor Yaremenko received points from the fans. Just as there were not enough readers’ votes for the women’s wrestling team to receive additional points. In both cases, the expert opinion was decisive.
It is interesting that none of the voters put the three laureates of each of the nominations on the first place.
After all, all the sports and non-sports battles of 2025 are behind us. We are glad that, summing up, we had someone to choose from. And most importantly, we are grateful to the Defense Forces that, thanks to their sacrifice, Ukraine is represented on the geographical and sports map of the world. We hope that 2026, along with sports victories, will give us the one that everyone dreams of.
In the meantime, we congratulate the Athlete of the Year Oleksandr Usyk, the Coach of the Year Bohdan Nikishin and the Team of the Year – the women’s wrestling team – with well-deserved recognition. Victories in sports demonstrate to the world that despite the horrors of war, Ukraine is alive.
