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For the week of August 15 - 21, 2001

  Features

Is it the altitude, 
or is it the hospitality?

Ukrainian athletes find training conditions in Sun Valley ideal


By PETER BOLTZ
Express Staff Writer

Ukrainian winter Olympic athletes have found not only a training center in Sun Valley, but a home away from home.

With the 2002 Winter Olympics just six months away, the Ukrainian men’s and women’s Olympic biathlon teams have been using the Sun Valley area to prepare themselves for a similar terrain and altitude in Utah’s Soldier Hollow near Heber. They, and Ukrainian skaters – here for the first time – came to Sun Valley the last two weeks of July.

Two of the women biathletes, Nina Lemesh, 28, (prone left) and Nataliya Tereshchenko, 25, prefer training with men’s coach Mykola Zots, standing at the telescope. Oleh Babich, 20, fires from a standing position while Roman Pryma, 21, takes off on a run to raise his heart and breathing rate. Express photo by Willy Cook.

Laryssa Temple, who bears the title of attaché for Salt Lake City for all the Ukrainian teams, is accompanying the athletes training in Sun Valley, and acting as their translator. The men’s and women’s biathlon teams consist of six competitors each. Also training here are two single’s skaters and one team of pair’s skaters.

This was the second visit for the male biathletes, who were here in February, and the third for the female biathletes, who were here in September and with the men in February. Both biathlon teams left Sun Valley at the end of July, but will return in January. The skaters will be practicing at Sun Valley’s indoor rink until Aug. 20.

Men’s biathlete coach Mykola Zots said Sun Valley is "perfect for training" because the altitude and terrain are similar to Soldier Hollow, where the Olympic biathlon competition will be held.

While the biathletes were not affected much by Sun Valley’s 6,000-foot altitude, the Ukrainian skaters have.

Pair’s coach Halyna Kukhar said it was the first time Aliona Savchenko and Stanislav Morozov have trained at high altitude.

Initially, the two were strongly affected while training in this environment, Kukhar said.

Ukrainian Olympic biathlete Olena Petrova, 28, is considered the best shot on the women’s team. On her right shoulder is a tattoo with the Egyptian symbol for success. Express photo by Willy Cook

"At first, it was hard for them to breathe, and they lost some of their coordination. They would do jumps and have a hard time orienting themselves."

After about 12 days, she said the two started to acclimatize. Now they are doing much better.

The single’s coach, Marina Amirkhanova, said her two skaters, Elena Liashenko and Vitalii Danilchenko, also had problems with the altitude.

"It was very bad for them," she said. "Elena had a sore throat and bloody nose for the first few days. But now I think they have adapted."

The skaters, who will be here until Aug. 20 are singles Elena Liashenko, 23, and Vitalii Danilchenko, 21; and the pair Aliona Savchenko, 17, and Stanislav Morozov, 21.

Temple said if people wanted to watch the skaters practice, they are welcome to come to the Sun Valley indoor rink at 9:20 p.m. on weekdays.

Meanwhile, two of the female biathletes, Nina Lemesh and Nataliya Tereshchenko, have chosen to train with the men instead of the women.

Coach Zots said "these athletes, at their level especially in an Olympic year, can choose the system of training they want. The coaches will accommodate their wishes."

Without getting into the complexities of the systems, Zots identified two major training systems for biathletes, the old Soviet system and the German.

"But after the fall of the USSR there were a lot of independent teams, and so individual coaches diversified," Zots said.

Now, many coaches use a hybrid system that mixes the Soviet with the German system and some of their own methods.

Women’s coach Nadiya Bilova agreed.

"Every coach has his own method," she said. "The athletes glean the benefit of each other’s coaches."

As serious and disciplined as these Ukrainians are, they need their fun, which, Temple said, is a word adopted into the Ukrainian language.

"Whenever we come to Sun Valley, we have fun," Bilova said. "Everyone is so interested in us. Everyone stops and asks us who we are and wishes us well."

The Ukrainians found their way to Sun Valley mostly through the efforts of Temple, a Ukrainian-American married to an American.

Temple, who has served as an attaché, translator and organizer for the team for the past nine years, said that she had been "working on" getting the Ukrainian team to train in Sun Valley because "it is what the athletes need" to prepare for 2002.

She said once Sun Valley Co. agreed to partly host the team, individuals, businesses and organizations joined in to help.

The opening ceremony for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City is Feb. 8.


The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.