The silhouette of Oleksandr Komarov, wearing a fluorescent yellow jacket, was easy to spot in the colourful panoply of a Stade de France vibrating with emotion on 8 September in Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis). The Ukrainian swimmer returned to the stage of the closing ceremony of the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games in a wheelchair, with the yellow and blue flag shining in the air in front of him. of travel, travelfrom Desireless.
The moment was full of symbols for the native of Mariupol, a martyr city in southeastern Ukraine destroyed and occupied by the Russian army. A survivor of the deadly siege, the 36-year-old swimmer, suffering from muscular dystrophy, was preparing to leave Paris after having brought Ukraine three medals, including a gold (in freestyle), the first for the country.
It was in front of a BBC camera that Oleksandr Komarov found out, two days earlier, that he would be carrying the flag. The video of the athlete, moved to tears, went viral in Ukraine. An honorary citizen of Mariupol, the Ukrainian received dozens of messages from Mariupol residents delighted with his victories.
There is a history of great affection between him and his hometown, a port city of half a million inhabitants. A two-time medallist at the 2016 Rio Games, he popularised sport in schools and among disabled children throughout his twenty-one-year sporting career: “I have always tried to be useful to my city and make it more inclusive”explains Oleksandr Komarov, contacted by telephone on September 10, upon his return from Paris.
Living “under Russian bombing”
“I consider that the people who survived the siege of Mariupol won the jackpot »He said with bitter irony. He is well placed to talk about it. He experienced the Russian invasion in February 2022, before setting out, two months later, on a 2,000-kilometre journey to settle in Kapfenberg, in eastern Austria, where he now lives in a 20-square-metre social housing unit with his wife, Kateryna.
It was she who, on February 24, 2022, woke him up to tell him that the Russian army was at the gates of the city. The day before, elected municipal official since 2020, he had returned late after spending six hours discussing the installation of cycle paths: the project had been accepted. What’s next? Taking refuge in his parents’ house, they lived “under Russian bombing, twenty-four hours a day”deprived of water, electricity and internet connection. Until March 16, when part of his house collapsed after a bombing.
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