Biathlete of the Ukrainian national team Yulia Dzhima commented on winning the silver medal in the individual race at the European Championships 2023.
“I think I managed the race, it’s a pity that there was one miss. I missed because I really wanted to fight for the victory. But second place is also very good. This is my first time in Lenzerheide, I really like it here, calm weather, sunny. Today there were many zeros, so it was difficult to fight the miss for the podium.
There was a calm on all lines, except for the first one, and on the first line the wind blew a little, but I made a correction for the wind. Standing, I think I couldn’t do it myself, because I really wanted to hit, but it turned out as usual. Well, that’s just one miss. I could have made more mistakes, because I was already very tired after 9 previous races. If only I had a couple of days to rest.
But it turned out that after three days of starts and immediately moving, so it’s very hard to start. Fatigue is already felt, accumulated. I hope tomorrow I will be able to rest and recover a bit. To be honest, I have always fought for medals: both for the team and for myself, I wanted to show the result. However, this year the priorities have changed.
Now one dream is to end the war as soon as possible, everything else fades into the background. Of course, I try to show the best result only for the country and I really hope that this means something, although 0.00001% of what I can do for Ukraine. Because for me personally, they mean less than they did before this year.
It’s good that today there is a medal, because this year started very hard, at the beginning of the season I had covid and in general it became more difficult to fight for medals, because you are constantly psychologically knocked out by the news from home, and you are empty inside. I think that every athlete understands me, when you get nervous because of everything that is happening at home, then there is simply nothing inside, the muscles are empty, like emotions. Therefore, I am happy with the silver medal. Glory to Ukraine,” said Jim.
