“The year 2024 was full of victorious sports events for Ukrainians. Despite the war, we were able to admire our flag on the podium of the Olympic and Paralympic Games and rejoice in the unique achievement of Oleksandr Usyk.”, — write: sport.unian.ua
Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine claimed the lives of almost half a thousand Ukrainian athletes and led to the destruction or damage of hundreds of sports facilities. But despite this, Ukraine has retained a strong voice in the world of sports.
Failure at Euro-2024Unfortunately, our athletes did not start the sports year on a high note. In June-July 2024, Ukraine participated in the European Football Championship. On the eve of the tournament, experts predicted the success of the Ukrainian team in advance. After all, in the group with Belgium, Romania and Slovakia, Ukraine “one hundred percent must take the second place” and “fight for the first”.
Undoubtedly, there were reasons for such expectations: the entire backbone of the Ukrainian national team is the players of the top Ukrainian clubs, or the TOP-5 European championships. In terms of age, the Ukrainian national team is also an ideal team. There are both experienced players and promising youth. And the basis of the national team is players aged from 22 to 27 years old – the best period for a football player.
Therefore, it is not surprising that on the eve of the championship, Rebrov’s wards were “bet” not only in Ukraine – many international journalists also believed that the team had a chance for the 1/8 or even 1/4 finals. And in Ukraine, our national team was called “the best in the history of the country”.
Unfortunately, the key failure for the Ukrainian team occurred precisely in the first match, when our national team lost to an outsider – the national team of Romania. De facto, this meeting was the reason why the “yellow and blue” could not leave the group. After all, Rebrov’s wards beat Slovakia and drew with the favorite – Belgium.
As a result, in the tournament table of group E, all four teams scored 4 points each. But due to the crushing defeat of Romania on goal difference, Ukraine became the only one that did not advance.
Ukraine defeated Slovakia at Euro 2024, but it was not enough / photo UNIANAfter that, the crisis in the “yellow and blue” only gained momentum. In the first group matches of the League of Nations, the Ukrainians lost to Albania and the Czech Republic. And again, the relatively stable continuation of the participation of the Ukrainian team in the tournament did not help it to go further. Despite two more draws and two wins, Ukraine took second place in the tournament table and did not receive a direct ticket to Group A.
Therefore, Rebrov’s team will compete with Belgium on March 23 next year for entry into the main division.
Crisis in Ukrainian club footballTherefore, it is impossible to ignore the crisis in Ukrainian football in general. At the club level, Ukrainian football, unfortunately, also confidently demonstrates unceasing degradation. This can be judged by the performances of Ukrainian teams in European Cups.
Traditionally for Ukrainian football, only two teams – “Dynamo” and “Shakhtar” – managed to get into the autumn part of the European Cup.
And if “Shakhtar” received a direct ticket to the Champions League thanks to the first place in the Premier League, then “Dynamo” had to qualify to enter the European Cup.
A confident start against “Partizan” and a fairly good game against “Rangers” gave hope that “Dynamo” still found “its” strategy under Shovkovsky’s coaching. And even the defeat by “Salzburg” and relegation to the Europa League did not greatly affect this hope – the result was still satisfactory.
However, from the very first matches in the Europa League, “Dynamo” began to lose points and destroy the dreams of fans for the spring European competition. And if in the confrontation with the strong “Lazio”, “Hoffenheim” or “Roma” there really wasn’t much hope. In the games with Ferencvaros or Viktoria Plzen, Dynamo fans clearly expected more from the team. Unfortunately, in the end, after six matches, the Kyivans have six defeats and zero points.
And although at the beginning of 2025 they will have two more games in the European Cups (against Galatasaray and Russian Federation), Shovkovsky’s wards have already lost any mathematical chances of reaching the playoffs. Now “Dynamo” occupies the last, 36th place in the Europa League standings.
“Shakhtar” is in a better situation: the miners managed to draw with “Bologna” and beat “Young Boys” in the European Cup. We can also mention the extremely emotional match with PSV, where the victory was literally stolen from the people of Donetsk in the last minutes.
At the end of 2024, the Ukrainian team occupies the 27th place in the tournament table and will have two more matches in the coming year. At the same time, if in the game with “Borussia” it will be difficult to take points, then there are really chances with “Brest”.
Shakhtar FC football players rejoice after scoring a goal / photo UNIAN
However, Shakhtar’s price for such results in the European Cups is third place in the Ukrainian Premier League and 10 points behind the leader – Dynamo.
In fact, the trend of Ukrainian football giants has not gone anywhere, if not to degradation, then to stagnation. But it is nice to state that even despite the war, the appearance of new competitive clubs adds some bright colors to the UPL. Although it is still quite early to compare, there is hope that the conditional “Alexandria”, “Polyssia”, “Kryvbas” or “Rukh” can really turn into teams of the level of “Karpat”, “Dnipro” or “Metalist”, which the latter were in the early 2010s.
In general, the very possibility of holding matches and the appearance of fans in the stands at a time when Russian missiles are flying at Ukrainian cities is already quite an achievement for football in Ukraine. And we believe that in better times, Ukrainian clubs will still be able to shine at international tournaments.
The Olympic Games and the historic jump of MaguchichThe war could not break the sports spirit of the participants of the 2024 Olympic Games from Ukraine. Our athletes, who due to the war had to train elsewhere, and not in the familiar arenas, who performed with a heavy heart due to enemy shelling of their hometowns and the country in general, were able to win 12 medals. Three gold, five silver, and four bronze awards allowed Ukraine to take 22nd overall team place.
On the one hand, 12 medals is the second worst figure in history for Ukrainians at the Olympics (only 11 awards were won at the Rio de Janeiro Games in 2016). But on the other hand, three “golds” is Ukraine’s best performance at the Olympic Games in the past twelve years.
Ukrainian saber fencers won one of the gold awards in a tense confrontation with the team of the Republic of Korea. In the final, Korean female fencers were ahead immediately after the first round of the match (the match consisted of nine duels) and with minimal led by a margin in the last one. But Olga Kharlan, who was supposed to complete this team performance for Ukraine, showed a higher, stellar class. The result is “gold” at the Games and the athlete’s sixth personal Olympic medal.
Olga Harlan won gold at the Olympics / photo REUTERSFor the first time in the last twelve years, a Ukrainian boxer received the gold award. Oleksandr Khizhnyak was close to becoming a champion even at his debut Olympic Games-2021 – he reached the final, but then it didn’t work out. So only in 2024 did he achieve his goal and became the fifth Olympic champion from Ukraine in this discipline. Vasyl Lomachenko and Oleksandr Usyk won the last “golden” result in boxing at the Olympics in 2012.
High jumper Yaroslav Maguchykh brought the third “gold” of the 2024 Games to Ukraine. A few months before the Olympics, during the Diamond League 2024, she broke her own record, reaching a height of 2.07 meters. And the next jump of 2.10 m – a world record that other athletes could not reach for 37 years – forever etched her in the history of athletics. The former achievement of 2.09 m was set by Stefka Kostadinova from Bulgaria at the 1987 World Championships… So it is not for nothing that at the end of 2024, World Athletics recognized Yaroslava Maguchih as the best track and field athlete of the year in non-running disciplines.
Paralympic Games: successful debutants from UkraineOne cannot fail to mention the result of the 2024 Paralympic Games for Ukraine. Ukrainian athletes, who competed in a record number of disciplines for us this year (seventeen out of twenty-two), won 22 gold, 28 silver and 32 bronze medals, which allowed our country to take seventh place in the overall medal tally. Ukrainians won the most awards in swimming. At the same time, more than 20% of the Ukrainian national team became debutants of the 2024 Paralympic Games.
Evil tongues, of course, can note that 82 won medals is the worst figure for Ukraine at the Paralympics in sixteen years. And in terms of the amount of “gold”, Ukraine generally showed the worst result since 2000. But, again, one should not underestimate the factor of the war and the general exhaustion of Ukrainians because of it.
A unique achievement of Oleksandr UsykAt the end of 2024, Ukrainian boxer Oleksandr Usyk made the whole world talk about athletes from Ukraine.
In fact, his victory in a fight against the British Tyson Fury back in May created a stir. Then Usyk received the fourth belt and the title of absolute champion of the world in super heavy weight.
In this way, the Ukrainian became the author of a truly unique achievement. First, we are talking about the “absolute” heavyweight title itself, which has not been conquered by anyone for 25 years (the last such champion was Lennox Lewis in 1999). Moreover, Oleksandr Usyk became the first “absolute” in the era of four belts.
We will remind you that until 2004 it was enough to win three titles – WBA, WBC and IBF – to obtain the status of absolute world champion. But in 2004, the WBA recognized the WBO as an equal organization. And since that time, a new era has begun, during which to obtain the status of absolute champion, one must have four main titles.
Secondly, the Ukrainian boxer became the third athlete in modern history with four championships who managed to become “absolute” in different weight categories. After all, even before the transition to super heavyweight, Usyk was also an absolute champion.
It is worth noting that in the summer the Ukrainian boxer announced that he would give his IBF title to the winner of the Joshua-DuBois fight. The championship belt was raffled off in September, and DuBois won it. So at the moment, it is not excluded that Oleksandr Usyk may again compete for the last title next year. And he will be able to become the absolute champion for the second time.
Sports 2024 for Ukraine ends with Usyk’s resounding victory over Fury / photo t.me/V_Zelenskiy_officialBut even without this, at the end of 2024, Usyk gave a gift to boxing fans by winning a mandatory rematch with Fury. This fight also became special in its conclusion, when after the victory Oleksandr Usyk raised the real three-hundred-year-old saber of Hetman Ivan Mazepa in the ring in Saudi Arabia. It was written about in the New York Times, Guardian, Al Jazeera, Le Monde… After that, interest in Ukraine, the hetmanship, Mazepa and Ukraine’s struggle with Russia for its own freedom – three hundred years ago and now – has grown many times in the world.
Nikita Shenderovskyi