By Oleksandr HONCHARUK, The Day
Half of Berdychiv took to the city square to watch men juggling up with
hundred kilogram weights. It is no secret that Berdychiv has the image
of a rather unusual but certainly very sports-inclined city. It gathers
annually dozens of the best high-jumpers who compete for the prizes in
honor of the Meritorious Coach of the USSR Viktor Lonsky, who managed to
train so many masters of sports in far from ideal conditions that even
large centers never dreamed of. The memory of local fans still holds the
success of the Progress Factory soccer team and the Ukrainian championship
in the "Ready-for-Labor-and-Defense" combined events.
Everybody misses those days. You can judge by yourself: on weekends,
in spite of the very late hour, on the square in front of the Barefoot
Carmelite Cathedral hundreds of city-dwellers gathered to witness a hitherto
unheard of spectacle: the all-Ukrainian competition of the strongest powerlifters,
called Bohatyr 1999 (the Bohatyrs were legendary heroes of East
Slavic myth - Ed.). As president of the Kyiv Sports Club,
a well-known former jumper, Volodymyr Kiba told The Day, Berdychiv
witnessed the arrival of an impressive array of powerlifters, including
world and Europe champions Viktor Naleikin, Volodymyr Ivanenko, Yuri Orobets,
along with the brothers Dmytro and Oleksiy Soloviov.
The audience, composed of individuals and whole families, remained quite
impressed with the floodlit demonstration of strength that went well into
the night.
The very first event, Blacksmith's Stroll, in which athletes ran a 10-meter
dash with two attache-cases each weighing 100 kg., stirred a storm of emotion.
The other events were: Road to the Barn (who would first and most skillfully
loading 100 kg. sacks onto a wagon), Bohatyr's Carousel (spinning a few
metric centners), and A Hard Nut to Crack (who could hold two 200 kg. balls
the longest). Undoubtedly, this could only be done by real strongmen, of
whom Kyivan Volodymyr Batiuk, 23, was strongest. With his impressive vital
statistics (186 cm. tall and weighting in at 110 kg.) still inferior to
those of his main rivals Roman Novyk (185 cm. and 135 kg.) and Yuri Orobets
(185 cm. and 165 kg.), he managed to display true Cossack valor. And, as
the local proverb says, boldness is the best trump!







