Yana Hladiychuk Trains In Poland after fleeing the war in Ukraine

BYDGOSZCZ, POLAND - APRIL 16: Ukrainian Olympic pole vaulter Yana Hladiychuk, 28, looks for the tram schedule after a training on April 16, 2022 in Bydgoszcz, Poland. Yana fled her native Kyiv shortly after the beginning of Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine with her mother, cat, bags full of sports clothes and her vaulting poles. "Not every bus was suited to transport them,” she said, and explained that her journey took about a week. She has since been living in hotel and training in Bydgoszcz, where she was in training camp for five months last year. Her father, brother and many friends stayed behind, and Yana checks her phone often to catch up on their well-being and whether anyone needs help. Despite scant training and sleep she placed fourth at the World Indoor championship recently in Belgrade. “Who needs all these medals and results if the day after the World Championship, Russia throws a ballistic missile 100 meters from my house, where my family is now?” she wrote a day after on Instagram. “You don’t think about material things,” she says, and kept only a bib from competition now in Belgrade. In Poland she trains with her coach, though she has little time ahead of a long season in which she plans to compete at the European Championship in Munich, the World Championship in Oregon, the Diamond League and other major track and field events. ​ (Photo by Maja Hitij/Getty Images (Photo by Maja Hitij/Getty Images)