Two-time European weightlifting champion Oleksandr Peleshenko died today while defending Ukraine against the Russian invasion. He was 30 years old.
His death was reported by the Ukrainian Weightlifting Union. According to the media, over 400 Ukrainian athletes have already lost their lives in the current conflict.
Peleshenko, who enlisted a few days after the start of the war in February of last year, is the first victim among the Olympians.
At the Rio de Janeiro Games in 2016, he took fourth place in the 85 kilogram category.
“It is with great sadness that we inform you that the heart of the honored champion of sports of Ukraine, Oleksandr Peleshenko, has stopped beating today. We express our sincere condolences to the family and everyone who knew Oleksandr,” the weightlifting association said on Facebook.
“War takes the best from us. Heroes don’t die,” said coach and member of the union leadership Viktor Slobodjaňuk.
Peleshenko won European titles in the 85 kg category in 2016 and 2017.
His sports career was marked by two punishments for doping. In 2018, he was banned for eight years.
For example, the death of boxing coach Mychajlo Korenovsky, who died last January in a Russian attack on an apartment building in Dnipro, also drew attention. When the rocket hit, the outer wall of the house collapsed in the very place where Korenovský’s apartment was.
Ukrainian kickboxing champion Yevhen Zvonok was killed in the bombing of the city of Chernihiv last February.
In April 2022, sports shooter Ivan Bidňak, who won a silver medal at the European Championship in the air pistol team competition and helped win the Ukrainian team participation in the 2012 Olympics at the World Championship, died in Kherson.
Footballer Serhiy Balanchuk, a former Dynamo Kyiv and Maccabi Haifa player, was killed the year before last July in the Donetsk region.
