Ukraine won three gold, five silver, and four bronze medals at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, placing 22nd among 84 competing countries as the games came to an end on Aug. 11.
Ukraine received the biggest number of gold medals at the Olympics since 2012, when it won five at the London Games.
Ukraine's Olympic triumphs were celebrated back home, where positive news is rare and Russian troops continue to launch daily attacks against civilians while steadily advancing on the battlefield.
The Olympics kicked off on July 24, with some events held two days before the opening ceremony on July 26.
Only 140 Ukrainian athletes competed at the Olympic Games in Paris this year, the smallest number in the history of the country's participation in the games, as Russia's war has damaged or destroyed sports' facilities and frequent air raid alerts interrupt training.
China took first place at the Olympics, winning 40 gold, 27 silver, and 24 bronze medals, followed by the U.S. and Japan.
Russian and Belarusian athletes were allowed to compete in the games as Individual Neutral Athletes (AINs) with "strict eligibility conditions" – which included being banned from team participation and displaying any flags or official identification with either country.
Elsa Court
Among Ukraine's highlights of the Olympics are the women's saber fencing team winning the war-torn country's first gold at the games and two of its athletes placing first and third in women's high jumps.
Fencer Olga Kharlan led her team to the finals in women's saber fencing after taking bronze on July 29. The six-time Olympic medalist beat South Korea's Choi Se-bin 15-14 in a fiercely contested match.
Ukrainian high jumpers Yaroslava Mahuchikh and Iryna Gerashchenko won gold and bronze at the Olympics. The 22-year-old Mahuchikh, currently the world record holder for women's high jump, won the competition with a jump of 2.00 meters.
Ukrainian wrestlers Parviz Nasibov and Zhan Beleniuk also won silver and bronze, respectively, at the Olympics. Beleniuk, who won gold in Tokyo and is also a Ukrainian lawmaker, retired after winning bronze in men's Greco-Roman wrestling in the 87-kilogram category, beating Polish athlete Arkadiusz Kulynycz.
Kateryna Hodunova
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