May Digest: Heroes of the Sports Front

Sports are out of politics, but it’s hard to play sports under the bombing or with weapons in hand. Ukrainian athletes were able not only to prepare but to perform well at international level competitions. Today we are talking about sports heroes.

Absolute superiority

At the World Junior Weightlifting Championships (U20), which took place on May 2–10 in Heraklion (Greece), Ukrainian Bohdan Goza became the absolute world weightlifting champion among juniors in the weight category up to 109 kg. He became the best in the snatch, breaking his own world record – 195 kg.

In the clean and jerk he lifted 215 kg – 2 kg more than his best result in international competitions. His total – is 410 kg. This is 51 kg more than Ammar Ali (Iraq), who won silver.

After winning the world junior championship, Bohdan plans on performing at adult competitions. The European Championships are currently taking place in Albania and they decided to skip this comp with the coach. Due to the too-short interval between starts, he would not have had time to recover. The immediate goal is the World Championship, which will be held at the end of the year.

In addition to Bohdan Goza at the World Championships in Heraklion, outstanding results were shown by:

Maxim Dombrovsky – gold medal in the weight category up to 89 kg with a total of 345 kg (155+190)

Svetlana Samulyak – silver medal in the weight category up to 55 kg with a total 192 kg (89 + 103)

Bohdan Tatarenko – bronze medal in the weight category +109 kg with total374 kg (167 + 207)

It is important to note that the Ukrainian team participated in the competition for free. All expenses were covered by the host country – the Greek Ministry of Culture and Sports and the National Olympic Committee.

Victories of Ukrainian powerlifters

Ukrainian powerlifters glorified our country at the World Championships in the bench press in Almaty (Kazakhstan). In the overall standings, they won 3 gold medals, 1 silver, and 1 bronze:

Ivan Chuprinko won gold in the bench press among men of the open age group in the weight category up to 74 kg. With a result of 292.5 kg, he became the absolute world champion, defeating the most titled champion – the Japanese Daiki Kodama.

Oleksandr Chernyshov won a gold medal in the second veteran group in the weight category up to 66 kg with a 160 kg bench press.

Oksana Vedmid for the second time became the world champion in the open age group in the weight category up to 52 kg. Her result is 135 kg.

Oksana Motrunchik won silver in the weight category up to 47 kg with a result of 100 kg.

Alena Borshchevskaya became third in the weight category up to 84 kg with a 112.5 kg bench press.

The final result of the women’s team is third place. 

The World’s Strongest Man 2022 contest: almost done

29th of May, in Sacramento, California, ended The World’s Strongest Man 2022 contest. On the first day of the finals, the Ukrainian Oleksiy Novikov was in the lead, winning two of the three exercises. He even set a world record in Flintstone Barbell. Brit Tom Stoltman was only 1.5 points behind him, and American Martins Licis closed the top three.

But in the final stages of the competition, Stoltman went far ahead, winning a total of 51 points. Novikov and Licis scored 43 points each. Since the American showed the best time in the Atlas Stones, he became the second, and Novikov the third.

We are sure that these are not the last victories of the Ukrainians. And the most important is yet to come.