Qualified swimmer Andrei Kalina won Russia’s first gold at the 2024 Paris Paralympic Games, winning the 100m breaststroke. The athlete now has seven medals at the highest level, won in Athens, Beijing, Tokyo and the French capital.
Also, four gold ones. andrew kalina He took three to Russia and three to Ukraine. He himself tells how his phenomenal career developed and the unyielding character of a swimmer born in Slavyansk (Donetsk region) without his left arm below the elbow was forged:
“I went to a regular kindergarten. My mother works in the preschool system, where she rose from nanny to manager. She knew where to start my education and in which direction to go. When she stayed late, I also stayed at the kindergarten, where there was always work for me: helping the teachers with cleaning the group or the cooks in the kitchen. These were my first steps on the path to growing up.
I also went to regular high school. Things weren’t always easy there. I wasn’t always accepted somewhere. But I was prepared for this from the start.”
At the age of five, Andryusha almost drowned after falling into a whirlpool. The mother tried to save her son, but if it weren’t for the tourists who came to help, then… In the end everything ended well and “they decided to send the boy to swim”:
“The children’s coach who worked at the children’s pool didn’t want to take me because he was afraid of taking responsibility. At my parents’ insistence, I still joined the group. However, no one really worked with me. I saw other children learning to swim and wanted to prove that I could do it too. And one day, at the end of the class, he suddenly picked me up and swam underwater. I remember very well my first feeling: I can swim!
As a result, after seven years, Kalina already felt at home in the pool, he felt good in the water, and then an astute adaptive swimming mentor invited the guy to his group.
And he floated and flew. As a member of the Ukrainian team, Andrei became a three-time world and European champion, and won three Paralympic gold medals.
But eleven years ago, after the 2013 World Championships, Kalina decided to change her sporting citizenship:
“I trained in kyiv and swam for Ukraine at all previous World Championships and Paralympics. I thought about moving to Russia after the London Paralympics, but due to family circumstances it didn’t happen until a year later.
The determining factors were the conditions of education and the standard of living; in both respects, Russia is more comfortable. It is true that due to the so-called quarantine, mandatory when changing countries, I had to stay away from competing for two years.“
And all these years Andrey does not forget his native Slavyansk, remembering his childhood and his first successes:
“I miss it. I still have relatives and friends in Slavyansk… The hardest thing for people is the economic blockade. It is very difficult to earn money. People are tired. It is clear which way they look and where they seek help. During the six years I lived in Russia, I got used to feeling Russian. I started to think differently.
…I miss the Ukraine that was there when I was a child. Today’s Ukraine is a completely different country. And everything that happens there is a great surprise to me.”.
Following the aforementioned quarantine, Kalina was preparing to compete at the 2016 Rio Paralympic Games, but the Russians were not allowed to enter Brazil:
“I was at the top of my game. With the results I showed in the evaluations at the Olympic Centre “Lake Krugloye” near Moscow, as it turned out later, I would have taken three “golds” in Brazil. It is a pity that our team was not able to perform there.”
When the team’s ban was lifted, the swimmer “had a blast” at the Tokyo Paralympics and took home three gold medals:
“It was a surprise for the whole team, we were expecting and preparing, but we didn’t expect such a surprising result. I especially remember the 200-meter medley swimming event. She didn’t give up for many years, I managed to swim faster, lose seconds, but not enough. And then everything went well, even more successful than we expected. It was the best moment of my career.”
And three years later, already in Paris, the Honored Master of Sports of the Russian Federation, holder of the Russian Order of Friendship, Andrei Yakovlevich Kalina, won his next (seventh) Paralympic gold medal.
And to make you understand how great the potential of the indestructible swimmer is, let me remind you: a native of Slavyansk won his first gold in Athens, twenty years ago. And then he was only seventeen years old…
P.S. In addition to Kalina, the Russians stood out yesterday: Andrei Vdovin – bronze in the 100m race in the T37 class. Kirill Pulver – Bronze in 100-meter freestyle swimming in S5 class. Daria Lukyanenko – bronze in 400-meter freestyle swimming in the S11 class. Vladimir Sotnikov Silver in 100-meter backstroke swimming in S13 class. Victoria Ishiulova- bronze in swimming at a distance of 100 meters breaststroke in the SB8 class.
