Ukrainian coaches, Indian athletes: Field days

The beleaguered country's influence on Indian athletics has been very strong

A few hours after news trickled in of Russian troops entering Ukraine, Sharad Kumar took to Twitter. “Just spoke to my coach in Ukraine Kharkiv,” he tweeted, “he is worried, he can hear bombing from his room, he is planning to move to his garage underground.”

Kumar won bronze in F42 High Jump in Tokyo last year, the pinnacle of a lifelong journey in para sport that culminated with long due Olympic success. For him, this Caucasus conflict is personal. He had, after all, spent all of 2020 — and most of the last six years actually — training in Kharkiv, in the north east of Ukraine, one of the first cities that felt the effect of the bombings. He did so following his coach Nikitin Yevhen, when the Ukrainian moved back home after a stint as the national high jump coach in India. That was six years ago, and Kumar had since based himself there, even enrolling in the Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute just so he could make friends he could speak in English with. “When I was there, I’d heard of military conflict, but not like this,” Kumar said. “It was always there at the back of the mind.” And now it’s front and centre.

Kumar isn’t the first Indian athlete with connections in Ukraine. The country has a history of employing Ukrainian coaches at various levels and across disciplines with varying measures of success. 

Sharad Kumar (right) with his coach, Nikitin Yevhen

The most famous, (and infamous), perhaps, is Yuri Ogorodnik, the athletics coach who served in India for two decades from the early 2000s, and died in June last year. Ogorodnik’s influence and reputation was respected enough for the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) to release an official condolence upon his passing. “I am sad that we have lost a friend of Indian athletics,” AFI President Adille Sumariwalla said, adding that Ogororodnik “made a difference with his approach to training and preparation for competition”. Which is perhaps a neat way of summarising everything Ogorodnik taught Indian sport. 

Ogorodnik introduced Indian athletics to modern training methods, equipment and even helped create better systems. He was, however, sacked in 2011 after six top Indian athletes — including the 2010 Commonwealth and Asian Games 4x400m relay gold-winning team members Ashwini Akkunji, Sini Jose and Mandeep Kaur — tested positive for a banned steroid that they said was recommended to them by the Ukrainian. 

What followed was a high-profile drama, with Ogorodnik saying he was “fearful for his life” and claiming he was being framed, before leaving in silence and without any official goodbyes. Four years later, he was back, coaching athletes for the 2016 Rio Olympics, but after a disastrous showing, he left, never to return. 

Ogorodnik’s compatriot and colleague, the sprint coach Dmitry Vinaykin, too, lost his job the same summer for non-performance at Rio, but was recommended as an expert for Odisha’s high-performance athletics academy in 2018.

Through the 2010s, Ukraine’s influence on Indian athletics was very strong, before slowly trickling away to nothing.

Known for their uncompromising attitude, gruelling training methods, and an overreliance on science and analysis, this has translated to different sports across the spectrum. Take, for instance, Indian football.

Churchill Brothers’ experienced defender Israeil Gurung remembers playing under the Ukrainian Mykola Shevchenko in 2017 as “gruelling and frankly, also a bit taxing”. Shevchenko had also played for Churchill and Dempo in the I-League, and while his coaching stint was short (he was sacked midway through the season with Churchill in the relegation zone), it was led by an insistence on pressing high and hard. “Everyone does that in modern football, but obviously we were not prepared for it,” Gurung says, “He had the ideas in his head and he showed us videos, but that’s just theory (as opposed to on-pitch coaching).” 

It is perhaps the perfect critique of Indian sport’s relationship with coaches from Ukraine: Science discounting the need for a personal touch. Over the past few years, there’s been a desire for a shift, more diversity, with coaches from Georgia, Italy, the US and the Netherlands filling up jobs across various levels. The common element has been an acceptance that sportspersons make mistakes, and are beyond science. Bad luck, bad form and bad faith are par for the course. 

There are few Ukrainian coaches at the top of Indian sport anymore. But for the ones that remain, there is despair, and hope that better times lie ahead.

“My friends told me there was bombing next to the apartment where I stayed (when he was in Kharkiv),” the Paralympian Sharad Kumar said. “My apartment was close to the Cantonment, so it’s possible. I hope things get better. It’s a terrible feeling right now.” 

Moulding players to systems

Led by a reliance on sports science, video analysis with a keen focus on nutrition, Ukrainian coaches have always had a penchant to separate individualistic spirit and direct it towards collective growth. Whether Valeriy Lobanovskyi's Dynamo Kiev, the athletics coach Yuri Ogorodnik (who marshalled India's relay teams in the 2010s), or more recently, Andriy Shevchenko, the desire to create systems that can thrive, rather than individuals who shine, has been paramount. A huge amount of this is done via embracing analysis vehemently and moulding players to systems, rather than the other way round.