Ukraine Solidarity Fund: “Sport … bringing people together”

Vladimir Lebedev competed for many years, for the Russian team, in freestyle aerials skiing. In 2006, at the Torino Winter Games, he won a bronze medal.

Enver Ablaiev competed at three Winter Olympics for Ukraine, in freestyle aerials skiing, in 2002, 2006 and 2010. Stanislav Kravchuk, also from Ukraine, competed at four straight Winter Games, 1998 to 2010. In Salt Lake City in 2002, he finished fifth in aerials. 

The Russian, the Ukrainian – they are good friends. More, like brothers. 

By the summer of 2022, the Russian was the head aerials coach for the U.S. freestyle ski team, based in Park City, Utah, near Salt Lake. Ablaiev was by now head coach of the Ukraine team; Kravchuk, the assistant coach. The Ukrainian team needed a place to train. Hello? 

“This initiative – we saw a need,” said Chris Hilton, president and chief operating officer of the Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation, which runs the 2002 Games venues. “We made an offer to Sergii,” meaning Sergii Bubka, overseeing a far-reaching 2022 effort to meet the needs of Ukraine’s athletes and sport staff. “This is what we need to do more of in this world.”

In February 2022, as the war broke out, the IOC set up a “Solidarity Fund for the Ukrainian Olympic community" in accord with Olympic Solidarity, the European Olympic Committees and a task force led by Bubka, the athletics great, IOC member and then President of the NOC of Ukraine (in office until 17 November 2022).

That fund has since grown some USD 7.5 million, with an eye toward the Games in Paris in 2024 and Milano Cortina in 2026. It already has helped some 3,000 athletes and coaches. In all, more than 115 requests for funding have gotten a green light. 

“Everyone has been really supportive, from President Bach and all the team, in this challenging time,” Bubka said.

“In the end, when you see the work, to give hope, to solve certain problems, to give athletes the chance to compete – this is amazing.”

The fund has underwritten projects around the world. Consider: a joint initiative between the IOC, World Aquatics and the Turkish NOC saw 17 artistic swimmers and eight officials from Ukraine take part in a one-month – a full month – training camp in October 2022 in Antalya, Türkiye.

In December, the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) and USA Wrestling welcomed the Ukraine women’s freestyle wrestling team to their home base in Colorado Springs for a camp in preparation for the UWW freestyle World Cup a few days later in Iowa. 

“The American team welcomed us very kindly,” said Ukrainian Oksana Livach, who wrestles at 50 kilograms.

In Iowa, the Ukrainians went on to win, defeating China, 6-4 – a historic first-ever win for Ukraine at the women’s World Cup.

Before the World Athletics championships in Eugene, Oregon, a slew of hugely complex arrangements were nailed down so that 37 Ukrainian athletes and nearly a dozen staff could spend two full weeks at the official USOPC training centre in Chula Vista, California. The programme included U.S. visa support, housing, meals, ground transport, access to the training facilities and sports medicine, therapy and more. 

“They were one of nine countries training here,” said George Bauernfeind, the centre’s chief sales and marketing officer. “In the dining hall, and I get choked up talking about this, to see these people and the other athletes embracing them – you know most teams wear their uniforms in the dining hall and around, just clapping for them. It was so impactful.”

And then, in May and June, the aerials team – along with the Ukrainian curling team – came to Utah. 

“Their team,” the aerials team, “shows up at Utah Olympic Park and, you know, we have a museum. We have a picture there from 2002. It’s Stas,” Kravchuk, Ukraine’s assistant coach.

Everyone crowded around to take a look: “He goes – that’s me. That’s me right there.”

For the next several weeks, Hilton said, “We had the U.S. team with a Russian coach, and the Ukrainian team, training, together. Everyone got along.”

Now Kravchuk is bringing his wife, Andriyana, and teenage son, Nazar, to Park City. He opted to join the U.S. team as assistant coach. 

So: The U.S. team’s head coach is Russian. His assistant coach is from Ukraine. “In the midst of this war,” Hilton said, “sport [is] bringing people together.”