France is contributing a million euros to help Ukrainian athletes prepare for the 2024 Summer Games in Paris, a gift welcomed by one Olympic hopeful already training there after leaving his war-torn country, pole vaulter Illia Bobrovnyk.
“Many lives of people have changed forever, for all time. For us, for Ukrainians, it’s important to feel support,” Bobrovnyk said in a video tweeted last Friday by France’s sports minister, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, to announce the gift, worth more than $1 million.
“We hope to win this war together with Ukraine and together go to peace for all time,” Bobrovnyk said in English, adding that since coming to France to get ready to compete in the Olympics, he has bested three of his own previous record performances.
Bobrovnyk, 17, expressed gratitude for the opportunity since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a year ago has made it impossible to train in his homeland. “It’s really hard in this time. I really want to say thank you to France for this help.”
Oudéa-Castéra said the money from the French government is intended to enable the Ukrainians at next year’s Olympics and Paralympics in Paris “to be as well prepared as possible” for competition.
“We want Ukraine to be embodied in the most beautiful way” at the 2024 Summer Games, she said during a visit to the Arena Stade Couvert de Liévin outside Paris, according to insidethegames.biz.
The war has taken a toll on Ukrainian sports. At least 220 Ukrainian athletes have died and some 340 sports facilities in Ukraine have been damaged or destroyed in the war as of the end of January, according to Ukraine’s sports minister, Vadym Guttsait.
France’s assistance comes as Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, are attempting to stop an International Olympic Committee proposal that would allow Russians and Belarusians to compete in the Paris Games as neutral athletes.
Oudéa-Castéra is among a list of more than 30 officials from nations around the world, including the United States, who have signed a statement expressing “strong concerns” about the feasibility of the IOC plan to reverse its previous ban.
Ukrainian officials have threatened a boycott of the Paris Games if Russians and Belarusians are permitted to participate under any circumstances, while Russia has demanded its athletes not be treated differently because of the war.
The French sports minister said the question of Russian athletes participating even without identifying their country “raises a whole series of questions which are very important to us and which today generate skepticism,” insidethegames.biz reported.
Oudéa-Castéra said French President Emmanuel Macron would address the issue this summer. Politico’s Europe edition said Macron told reporters in early February there would be “a reassessment” in the summer.
After that, the French president said, “we will take a stance depending on circumstances and what is happening on the ground.”
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo had already taken a stand several days earlier, calling for a ban on Russian participation in the upcoming Olympics before reiterating her position during a visit to Kyiv.
“As long as there is this war, this aggression, Russia on Ukraine, it is not possible to march as if nothing had happened, to have a delegation come to Paris, while the bombs continue to rain down on Ukraine,” the mayor told franceinfo radio.
The IOC, meanwhile, continues pushing back against critics of what it says is a response to discrimination concerns raised by the United Nations that is still only “an exploration of a primary concept for conditions of participation.”