It’s the soundtrack of the Ukrainian film Olga that speaks so much of the parallel between sport and armed conflict. The incessant pounding of gymnasts’ bodies against mats and apparatus merges almost seamlessly with the grotesque explosions and thuddings of war erupting in Olga’s hometown, Kiev, during the Maidan Revolution of February 2014. If the Olympics are ‘war, without the shooting’, then in this film at least gymnastics is the closest thing to sporting war that there is. The gymnasts train with relentless intensity and bravery, and in competition fight without mercy.
Olga 15, is expected to make the Ukrainian national team for the forthcoming European Championships. She is the only daughter of journalist Ilona who is investigating corruption at the highest level of Ukraine’s Lukashenko-led government. Lukashenko is supported by the Russians, who want to quash a free, independent Ukraine. Revolution is bubbling under, and violence is never far away. Olga’s mother is ruthlessly set on revealing the truth about Lukashenko’s regime and on promoting liberty for Ukraine. Murder threats are flying around. Nevertheless, Ilona persists.
Like mother, like daughter. Olga wants to compete at - no, win - the forthcoming European Championships and nothing else matters. Her entire being is focussed on achieving her training goals and on learning the ‘Jaeger’ somersault which may give her a chance of gold. She practices and practices and practices, swinging and turning and somersaulting high in the air, but the regrasp eludes her. Time and again, Olga crashes stomach first to the mats. Expressionless, she rebounds to her feet, remounts the bars, and tries again, and again and again.
Olga grumbles in the car on the way home. Her mother cannot watch her compete that weekend in an important selection event for the Euros. It’s always the way, it seems. They have a fierce, but brief, confrontation, then settle. The lights of Kiev, a modern and sometimes beautiful capital city, shine as their speeding car approaches home. There is silence and calm for the first time that day.
Suddenly, crash, the silence is broken with violent force emanating from somewhere outside Olga and Ilona’s previously secure little capsule. The car is thrown about, Ilona loses control, they narrowly avoid being crushed by a rapidly moving tram. Windows smash, glass everywhere, panic. The assailant seems to pursue them, then disappear. The car is written off and Olga is lucky to escape with nothing more than a bloodied arm. Her mother survives unharmed to fight another day and nothing more is said.
But then Olga finds herself uprooted and sent away to train in Switzerland, for her own safety. The bloodied arm she received in a murder threat in Kiev is replaced with bloodied palms torn while climbing a rope. There are conflicts with the coach as Olga ‘gets her feet wet’ and settles into the Swiss training regime, alongside the national team.
Olga weighs up the Swiss gymnasts and the coach. They are at a fair level, but she wants to be the ‘boss’. She despises her new coach’s instructions to train the Tkachev somersault she already performs well, when she needs the more difficult Jaeger to make the grade at Euros. The final straw is when Steffi, the team captain, is asked to show Olga what a Tkachev is. Hmph. Gymnastics has its own international language. Communication is not the problem. Olga knows what a Tkachev is. She hops up and easily performs one - light and lofty - in a sprinkling of magnesium. That day’s battle is won and Olga has earned her right to practice the highest difficulty.
She lives in splendid isolation, in a small but comfortable chalet overlooking a running track and the training hall. It’s Switzerland in the winter, and it often snows. Olga’s only friends - and, occasionally, her mother - are accessible on the phone and internet. It’s a lonely, but purposeful, life and Olga often ventures outside, whatever the weather, to sprint off her frustrations, vent her anger at her mother’s preoccupations, and strengthen her muscles.
Further conflict emerges. Olga takes on Swiss citizenship so she can have eligibility to compete for their national team now that she has fled Ukraine. The tables are turned on Steffi, who doesn’t like it much when Olga outdoes her in training. Olga’s French is poor and she can’t participate in post training banter. She suspects that the girls are badmouthing her, and she retaliates swiftly but bluntly in her mother tongue. It’s too much on both sides. Feelings bubble over. Olga and Steffi wrestle it out.
It’s tense; selections are underway. Young Zoe is slung off the team; she just hasn’t made it this time. Later, Olga supports the gymnast as she struggles to train the skills she has found difficult that day. A good tempered magnesium war takes place between the two, chalk flying and faces coated in the stuff, leaving them looking for all the world like two painted warriors. They become friends. Zoe is quitting the team and goes home the next day, but gives Olga an open invitation to visit her.
Olga’s place on the team becomes more solid; she continues to show the leadership qualities that made her the ‘boss’ in Kiev. She supports her team mates and reassures a nervous Steffi.
Her best friend remains Sasha, now the top gymnast on the Ukraine team, and they share all their feelings as Euros approach. Sasha has become fervent in her support of freedom and liberty and regularly protests in the Maidan. As her country goes through turmoil, Sasha has lost her commitment to the training that now seems secondary to her country’s struggles. The bangs and crashes she hears each evening on the city square are quite different to those she creates on the floor mat in daytime. Olga, now insulated from the War in her Swiss home, listens with concern but doesn’t attempt to advise her friend.
The next day, in a Stuttgart arena for the European Championships, Olga’s dream is broken. Recovering from the shock of finding out about a midnight assault on her mother that has left her horribly scarred, Olga performs a glittering routine on the bars, complete with a strong and flighty Jaeger. She is scored commensurately, but she collapses shortly after and, we assume, can play no further part in the Championships. Ditto Sasha, who forfeits her place in the competition by engaging in an impromptu verbal protest on the floor mat.
Sasha’s story ends sadly as she is involved in an attack on a Ukrainian policeman. The young gymnast is broken and the protestor realises the horror of war. Back in the safety of Switzerland, Olga discovers that a broken foot may threaten her Olympic ambitions. Lonely after a quarrel with Sasha, and facing only months of recovery while her Olympic dream drifts away, Olga decides to return to Ukraine. She attempts a desperate escape via friend Zoe’s house, but is thwarted. In despair, she finally manufactures her early escape from Swiss nationality and returns home to a now bright and airy Kiev where she is seen happily training young gymnasts. For now, Ukraine is home.
The film brings home the idea of sport, gymnastics in particular, as an activity and community that transcends national and international barriers. At the beginning of the film Olga is a gymnast above all, Ukrainian second as she pursues her Olympic destiny. By the film’s end, she chooses Ukraine as her identity even though it means she won’t compete in the Olympics.
Sasha’s story is somewhat different and even darker as she drifts from gymnastics to politics, then goodness only knows where. In the competition hall the Russian team are worthy only of her contempt and coach Vassily is worse, his desertion of the Ukraine team for a better paid role in Moscow an act of treachery. The boundaries between sports and politics become blurred and confused, and Sasha goes over to the dark side as she deserts the vault run to protest Ukraine’s right to freedom. This particular scene played out rather unfeasibly in the film, I felt, but it was a strong interpretation of Sasha’s growing conflict of loyalty between sport and nation as the military conflict in her hometown overwhelmed her. We don’t find out how she ended up after the Revolution ended, but the outcome of her conflict in the Maidan proved far worse than the scars, physical and mental, that Olga received during her sporting life.
Now, in the ‘real’ world, Ukraine is back at war and echoes of this film can be heard at every turn. Life imitates art as politics overcomes sport and, once again, Eastern European political destinies are played out alongside gymnastics’ histories. Only time will tell if the sport can survive.
Ukraine needs our help at this time as Russia subjects it to horrific crimes against its population and environment. The Ukrainian film Olga was screened at a limited number of UK cinemas as part of a benefit for Ukraine, but the itinerary was all too short, the showings were poorly attended and the run has now ended.
I recommend you see the film as soon as you can; it tells stories on many different levels and is so much more than just a sports film, capturing the essence of gymnastics and the political conflicts that have punctuated history.
Hopefully, it will be streamed soon but in the meantime, if you would like to support Ukraine, please make a donation to the Red Cross or to your local national rescue organisation working in Ukraine (Google it and donate only to known organisations).
Slava Ukraina. We pray for justice, mercy and peace for all of those affected by war.
