Blitz of the Olympic fencing champion Kharlan, engaged to the blue Samele
THEWar broke out on February 24 and Timofiy was one year old. She was in Kiev, today she is in Bologna, with her aunt Olga Kharlan: a gold, a silver and two bronzes at the Olympics with a saber and the courage to leave alone from Emilia, land in Romania and continue by car to the border with his homeland, to save his sister and niece. To collect medals, images of her linked to her world, to hold a mother without knowing anything and without consuming words. She is convinced only of all that is necessary.
How did it organize?
«I studied the map of my own land to understand how to enter a place where I am used to returning, unreal. I leaned on the Romanian fencing federation that created the contacts and then we waited for my family to be able to arrive in that area of Ukraine ».
Then she found herself in an impossible situation.
«Half an hour to hold my mother in a hug that would stay with her, she doesn’t move because my father is fighting. My family spent days in a shelter, lying on the ground, rationed food, space to invent, sleeping only from exhaustion. Now my relatives have moved to a safer home, we hope. ”
How did you greet your mother?
“Without a single sentence. Looks, squeezes. We would have regretted everything: “Hello? Goodbye? ”, Only bad choices. Better to mute. The return journey was also silent ».
In Budapest, her boyfriend, Gigi Samele, two silversmiths in Tokyo, still in his saber, came to pick her up.
«He has picked us up, exhausted. Now we are all together, we have to say thank you to many people, I still feel like at the time of that call on February 24th, at 5am, when my sister called and whispered “they shoot”. I heard it on the phone and I couldn’t believe it. ”
As the crisis grew heavier, did you fear war?
«The war has been going on since 2014, we have been fighting since Russia took over a piece of Ukraine, but not this one. The bombing, the horror we see no. What happened was not imaginable and now I no longer have a tomorrow, none of us have it, we have the next hour, at most: a short time and no desire to look further. Until it will be like this, until my people die. ”
Where was he during the Maidan riots?
«Looking at my Ukraine with pride, I was competing abroad. One afternoon I left while they were all in the square and two hours later I turn the phone back on and there was blood everywhere. I scrolled through the photos on my cell phone and saw only beatings. But we stayed there. Them in the square and I on the platform. It was important then to represent that Ukraine willing to sacrifice its life with fencing and it is important now. We athletes show pride, flag, dignity and send strength to those who fight ».
Did you expect a different future after Maidan?
“There we showed who we are, how much freedom matters to us. There is no turning back, it was a strong, overwhelming message, it reached everywhere. And it resists ».
Already in 2014 you asked for a boycott of Russian races and today the president of the federation is Usmanov, a Russian.
“It is necessary to suspend them all. How can you think of respecting the principles of loyalty that underlie sport now? How can a Ukrainian be near a Russian and ignore it? No, they must be stopped everywhere ».
Have you received any messages from Russian colleagues?
«No, not from them. It doesn’t happen. ”
Both you and your President Zelensky participated in “Dancing with the Stars”.
«I know, it seems absurd to say, even before when he was elected, let alone now. Nobody expected a showman to become a leader, but it happened precisely because he is not a politician, he is one of us ».
Did he vote for it?
“I didn’t vote, but now I do better: I believe in him, it gives me confidence to know that he is leading my country under attack”.
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