The crew of the Ukrainian kayaking foursome knew their bond was something special from the moment they first boarded the same boat.
As their oars rippled the surface of the water, the four men, lined up one behind the other, felt a burst of a new kind of energy that took their breath away.
"Boys, the world will be ours!" one of the kayakers, Dmytro Danylenko, couldn't help but shout after just a short while on the water.
"We all put down our oars and realized that in fifteen years of paddling in fours, no one had felt what we just felt," Danylenko told Olympics.com. "Everybody felt it."
The interplay was perfect from the start, so much so that after three years they only made one change to the seating chart, and that was at the very first training session. From the start, Oleh Kucharyk was on the bow, Danylenko was second, Ihor Trunov and Ivan Semykin were at the back.
Since that fateful first meeting, the foursome of kayakers has become more than just a team. They are an "Energy Circle".
As the first Ukrainian men's team to win the K-4 500m world title and earn an Olympic quota, the kayakers not only feed off each other's energy, but also willingly give back. At a time when their country is under attack, they raise money for rehabilitation and prosthetics for victims of war, including their friends and fellow athletes.
(olympics.com) gnews.cz-roz
https://olympics.com/en/news/paris-2024-olympic-games-canoe-sprint-ukraine-k4-energy-circle-aid-war
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