The first thing Anastasia Bryzgina (Lugansk, 24) does when she wakes up is watch the news.
Tired of reading stories about how part of her country, the Ukraine, is reduced to rubble, and its inhabitants killed, there was a time when she tried to kick that habit.
Disconnect.
But she was back to her old ways soon.
She couldn't ignore what's going on, and now she doesn't go a day without her knowing what's going on in front of her: she proves it by showing on her mobile all the media apps and Telegram messaging groups that she query.
The sprinter is in Eugene, Oregon, to compete in the 400-meter relay at the World Championships in Athletics.
It is her first major competition after Russia began its invasion of her country on February 24.
That day, Bryzgina returned to her apartment in kyiv after driving five hours from the north, where she was supposed to play the national championship, which was finally canceled due to the imminence of the conflict.
The war, as expected, has conditioned everything since then.
He packs his bags, leaves his apartment in a high-rise building in the capital, and therefore more exposed to bombs, and moves to his sister's house, which has an air-raid shelter.
He sleeps in the bunker for several days, and before his silence about what is happening, he contacts several Russian and Belarusian athletes whom he had as close friends.
"They came to kyiv, they know my family, they lived in my house, but none of them reacted to what was happening, so I started sending them messages to find out what they thought."
His answer opened a gap that will no longer be closed.
While Bryzgina was in the shelter, they competed in the Russian national championship, and took on the government's propaganda from him.
When the Ukrainian athlete tried to make them see what was happening with videos recorded by herself, not taken from any bias-prone television, the reaction was defensive.
“They told me that we wanted to destroy Russia's reputation, why was I sending them these horrible videos, that it was just a military operation.
I no longer have any contact with them.
I don't want to be friends with disgusting people who support those who are murdering in my country."
Bryzgina says she is surprised and disappointed by their attitude, because they are athletes who have traveled the world to compete at the highest level.
"I would understand that position in people who only go home from work and have never left Russia," she laments.
The sprinter supports the veto on the participation of Russian athletes in international championships, which has meant that none of her once intimates have been able to travel to Eugene.
“While we were in bomb shelters listening to explosions, friends she thought were close were only worried that their country would be excluded from the World Cup.
From that moment I realize that I no longer have friends.
The war thus ends the ties that sport created.
The runner from Lugansk was slow to take an interest in athletics.
Despite being born into a family of sprinters who competed representing the Soviet Union —his mother Olga won two Olympic golds and two silvers in the 400m between Seoul 88 and Barcelona 92, and his father a gold in the 4x100 in the South Korean city—, What she really liked as a child was dancing hip hop.
One day, coincidentally, everything changed.
She entered a race almost without training, she was last, and the spark flew, or maybe it was the call of genetics.
From there, everything went very fast.
Faced with the exodus of Soviet coaches abroad —especially to the United States—, after the fall of the USSR, there was little to choose from in her city, so her parents suggested that she go live in kyiv, but alone, because they they had their jobs in Lugansk.
She accepted, and from the age of 16 she followed the routines of a professional.
"I realized that if she wanted to win she had to train well."
Her greatest successes so far have been two gold medals in two junior European championships and a bronze in a European indoor championship.
The preparation for Oregon, logically, has not been ideal.
Train alone.
His technician sends him the plans by phone because he is instructing soldiers.
And after spending almost the entire month of March in kyiv hardly running beyond a specific exit to go around a lake, the federation of their country finally offers them an outlet: go to Portugal to exercise.
From there Bryzgina went to Alicante along with eight other colleagues, two coaches and several family members, invited by the Spanish athletics federation.
Her reception defines her as “warm”.
Meanwhile, she follows the news from her country, and she learns from her neighbors and from video cameras that Russian soldiers have moved into her family home in Lugansk.
About his father, he says that he stayed alone in that house for two months, before it was occupied.
“Every day we asked him to leave.
He tried to join the army, but was told that he was older.
He is 60 years old.
So he stayed helping refugees and doing humanitarian work.
In the end we insisted that it was his last chance to leave before the Russian troops arrived, and that he could be dangerous, and he left the house”.
Now his parents live near the Hungarian border.
“We all have our own stories and we hear news, so we share everything,” he explains.
Many of his friends and parents are now with a rifle defending their country, although at the moment he has not lost a loved one, although he does know many who have lost their homes due to being in an occupied zone or due to bombing.
His intention is to return to kyiv
George Orwell said that sport is a war without weapons, sometimes so focused on victory and crushing the rival that it becomes violent.
On the university campus in Oregon, however, Bryzgina, a sports medicine graduate, moves in a calm environment, with good training facilities and restaurants where athletes eat together as if it were an Olympic village.
The war is the main topic of conversation among the expedition from his country, but Bryzgina is aware that the interest of the rest of the world, when something drags on, tends to wane.
“I realize that people, especially in Europe, are a bit tired of this news because they see it on television as if it were a movie, although of course they worry, it is something that happens in another part of the planet.
For us, it is reality."
His idea, when the World Cup, the European Championships in Munich and a competition in Japan are over, is to return to live in kyiv.
Although he has traveled extensively, he doesn't want to be anywhere other than strolling through his old town or crossing his favorite bridge over the Dnieper River.
With all the noise of bad news around him, he recognizes the temptation to downplay the competition.
What is the relevance of running when everything collapses?
But he decides not to be carried away by apathy.
“I realized that I must fight to show the whole world that I am representing Ukraine.”
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