AFTER FORCING a draw from the clutches of defeat towards Poland’s Oliwia Kiolbasa, making certain a gold medal for Ukraine within the Chess Olympiad on Tuesday, Anna Ushenina quietly walked to the facet of the corridor and slumped into the hands of her teammate Natalia Buksa.
There have been no leaps of pleasure or high-fives, simply tears and hugs. When thousands and thousands again house, dealing with a brutal Russian invasion, have been fleeing for lifestyles and suffering for meals and safe haven, the gold medal — an Olympiad gold no much less — introduced simply fleeting reduction.
Later, with a quivering voice and welled-up eyes, Ushenina put the triumph in point of view: “It’s clearly a super feeling, however the medal can’t prevent a struggle.” There used to be a second of shocked silence as her voice echoed around the packed room.
The 36-year-old Ushenina, her nation’s first girls’s global champion, is from Kharkiv, simply 30 miles from the Russia border and one of the crucial closely shelled towns within the invasion. “It used to be a dreadful time as a result of we have been residing so just about the border. Once we heard the inside track that the Russians have been marching, we had no different choice however to escape with our circle of relatives with none arrangements,” she says.
Ukraine is the winner within the girls’s segment of the forty fourth #ChessOlympiad! Congratulations! ?♟️
?: Lennart Ootes & Stev Bonhage %.twitter.com/2SlMqKuJQE
— World Chess Federation (@FIDE_chess) August 9, 2022
The seasoned participant has no longer long past again house but. Like maximum of her teammates. Everybody within the five-member staff has a tale of ordeal to relate. The Muzychuk sisters, Anna and Mariya, made a harrowing get away from Lviv, a town in western Ukraine sharing a border with Poland, from the place they travelled to Germany and Spain.
Even supposing the inside track of an coming near near struggle used to be spreading, the sisters deliberated till the primary day of the full-scale invasion on February 24 prior to fleeing. “At round seven within the morning I awoke as a result of I heard a siren, which used to be somewhat of a shocker, since you don’t know what’s going down. I right away picked up my cell to test the inside track, and I noticed – a crisis,” Anna Muzychuk mentioned in a podcast at the site chessbase.com.
The staff from Ukraine on the Chess Olympiad in Chennai.
Through that point, Kiev used to be being bombed from Belarus. “They’re bombing our ships within the sea. They’re invading from the west, throughout the north, to the south. After which like: ‘oh my God, it is a struggle, what will have to we do? Mariya, get up, pay attention to the sirens, the struggle has began, I instructed my sister’,” she mentioned.
That evening, with flights halted and trains complete, the sisters reached the Polish border in a filled bus with only a bag and a computer. “We have been very unhappy, as a result of we didn’t need to go away. I like my town and my condo, and we have been leaving everyone in the back of. Our folks, our grandparents, maximum of our family. They’re nonetheless in Ukraine,” she mentioned.
On the border, they needed to look ahead to 15 hours in a queue to go. However she says they have been fortunate as the ones crossing by way of bus had particular lanes. “There have been individuals who spent days within the queue,” Anna Muzychuk mentioned. When the sisters in the end discovered a shop after crossing the Poland border, they discovered to her horror that almost all in their bank cards have been blocked — thankfully one card labored.
The boys’s staff captain Oleksander Sulypa used to be getting ready for a chess event in Reykjavik when the struggle struck. He right away left his circle of relatives in the back of and drove to the army base in Lviv and volunteered to shield his nation. “I didn’t think carefully. I sought after to be a part of protective my nation. My task is to observe the stations and forestall automobiles that pressure previous it. On a median, we used to go looking 2,000 automobiles,” Sulypa instructed The Indian Categorical.
The 50-year-old didn’t take part in direct fight, however helped take hold of loads of Russian spies close to the army camp and airport. “At the moment, chess used to be the very last thing in our thoughts. We didn’t know we might be alive for the Olympiad and I didn’t know the place the avid gamers have been, whether or not they have been useless or alive,” he mentioned, including that if want be, he would go back to the warfront once more. “My first accountability is to give protection to my nation,” he mentioned.
There have been others whose properties have been razed, who misplaced buddies and family, and who continued shut brushes with dying. And but, in Chennai, Ukraine’s girls’s staff rose to most sensible the desk at the ultimate day with a hard-fought win over Poland, regardless of drawing to India A and having a look at one degree as though they have been out of the race.
One of the crucial favourites, Ukraine were given off to a breezy get started on this Olympiad, profitable their first 4 video games prior to they stuttered and controlled most effective attracts. However they bounced again and stored their nerves. Their destiny used to be no longer of their palms and in the end, the United States provoking India talented them the name. The boys’s staff, in the meantime, completed twenty ninth.
It used to be additionally a triumph of collective will, with all individuals making an important contributions. The Muzychuk sisters — two of Ukraine’s greatest — racked up 13 out of 20 issues. Ushenina controlled 6.5/8 and Nataliya Buska 7/10. Ukraine used to be no longer the most efficient staff however they have been essentially the most resolute; they didn’t really feel the drive as a result of they’d noticed worse. The backdrop had stuffed them with a way of equanimity. Now all they would like, as Ushenina mentioned firmly, “is peace.”