Gradually making their way to Boston by plane, train, and automobile from Europe, other parts of the states, and their war-battered home country, the members of the Ukrainian national team are looking forward to rowing again in Boston after an overwhelmingly warm reception last year.
When the team arrived last year, they had no idea what to expect, and were not ready for the level of love that came their way.
"Last year when we come here, we were in shock because this competition, Head Of The Charles, is like a holy day here," said Nataliia Dovgotko, who will row in the two-seat of the women's four. "We were very happy. I don't know what place we can make for this competition, but it's great to participate, a big pleasure for us to be here."
The Ukrainian national team is bringing a Women's Four, a Men's Championship Eight, a Women's Single, a Men's Pair, and a Youth Four to this year's competition. The Ukrainian women's four were the first here, and arrived in Boston off a narrow win over Duke at the High Point Autumn Rowing Festival in North Carolina on October 10.
Organizing the team's sponsorship and logistics, Andrii Ivanchuk, head crew coach at Simmons University and a former member of the Ukrainian national team, took the first step to get the team to Boston last year, and he had more in mind that simply providing some rowing competition for his countrymen.
"When we made this the first time, that was actually the general idea, to build bridges, connect between the countries, because the bridges start from the simple people, regular people," Ivanchuk said. "This is how our countries could get closer."
Ivanchuk explained that, though rowing in Ukraine is continuing the best it can, it is impossible to hold regattas. This, combined with dwindling government funds, which are now directed towards military efforts, increased the need for Ukrainian boats to get out of their country and find other places to compete.
"We have a lot of people who help the team inside of Ukraine, and outside of Ukraine from United States as well. So, they have donors from all around the world," Ivanchuk said.
According to Ivanchuk, the rowers' experience at the Head of the Charles was special because, at other regattas, the Ukrainian team has been treated like everyone else. Here, they heard some of the loudest cheers in Head of the Charles history.
The team was also surprised by the high level of competition, assuming that rowing against mostly collegiate teams would make for an easier field. This year, expectations are managed, and they are hitting the water with a mind to place higher than their middle-of-the-pack finishes in the Champ Eight races a year ago.
Rowing gives these athletes a little bit of normal in lives that are anything but. Dovgotko may be thrilled by the competition and spectacle of the Head of the Charles, but she is also consumed with fears for the safety of her family and her son back home. During training months this year, the team had to overcome power outages when they trained in the dark, sometimes cooked over candle flames, and were continuously interrupted by sirens signaling them to bomb shelters.
"But we were with our families and it's better to be at home with families [than] be in another country and all day we worry. We worry what happens in Ukraine and if our families are safe," Dovgotko said.
For Dmytro Hula, who sits in the Men's Championship Eights boat and will arrive in town on Wednesday, giving him just three days to adjust to the seven-hour time change, he was able to bring his young family with him as he moved around Europe during the training season.
Excited to get back to Boston, Hula can do so with a somewhat lighter load now that his hometown of Kherson was freed from Russian occupation last November.
"I received a lot of messages from people who we met in Boston, from different rowers. They greeted me with the fact that our city was freed by our forces and our hometown," Hula said. "When I come now to Boston, the war is still very much going on, but my hometown is free-also constantly under enemy's fire-but it's free and it's very, very, very good to know that I can potentially return to my home now."
[Ed. Note: you can read a full interview with Hula on how the Ukraine team has been training this past year in row2k's World Championships coverage]
Hula remains shocked and humbled by the amount of attention and support he and his teammates received from other rowers, the media, and everyday people at the Head of the Charles a year ago. It is something he hopes to experience again.
"It's not something that we expect towards us, but something that gives us a bit of belief and understanding that people of America support Ukraine as a whole," Hula said. "All we dream of is to win this war and to live peacefully again. It brings our spirits up and inspires us and gives us some hope that we will really achieve victory, not in rowing but in our life, in our struggle for peaceful existence. We do hope that didn't change, and people still stand with Ukraine."
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