Stories about building a career and implementing your plans working hard are not just frequent items of magazine pages. For many, these are a kind of motivators and role models. Success stories are often told by personal growth coaches and even sectarian preachers. Most often such stories are accompanied by expressions “follow the dream”, “constant work on oneself” and “purposefulness”. The hero of our article understands the meaning of these expressions like no other. However this understanding differs from the generally accepted one in many ways...
Now 29-year-old Oleksii Denysiuk is one of the leaders of Ukrainian Paralympic national team in pistol shooting. He has been doing this sport since he was 13. Moreover, he is the author of several world records, bronze medalist of 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio and gold medalist of 2018 Ukrainian Championship (among healthy athletes). This is a tall and physically developed young man, full of energy and strength. And only a slight limp and cane are reminiscent of the terrible trauma he had to endure.
— Five years ago, I fell from big height, approximately from the height of the eighth floor. When I was falling, I was thinking: “This is all; I'll crush now ... .” And lost consciousness, so to say, in flight. I regain consciousness already on the ground. I think it’s not worth explaining that this was not the most pleasant “awakening,” recalls Oleksii.
Oleksii’'s pelvis and leg were broken and his lungs were damaged. Doctors managed to bring him back to life in the literal sense, as he survived a clinical death. But he fought out. Perhaps it was a great success, and perhaps Oleksii’s physical training played a great role here. Since childhood, he has been engaged in plenty of martial arts, besides shooting, i.e. boxing, judo, free-style wrestling, hand-to-hand combat and karate for six years, to include running, swimming and polyathlon (running, shooting and swimming), just for personal needs. It is not surprising that Oleksii graduated from the faculty of physical education. And he just always kept himself fit. That, as doctors believe, saved him from more severe injuries or even death.
However, after six months in a hospital bed, the predictions for Oleksii were disappointing; he could always remain confined to a wheelchair.
— Lung motor, metal implants. All this was painful and morally difficult. Perspectives were not very bright. Terrible thoughts came to my head, recalls Oleksii.
But contrary to predictions that prompted him a wheelchair, the future Paralympic athlete began to walk himself. Albeit with a cane, the left leg never regained its former mobility. And then something happened that was supposed to happen. As it turned out, the injury left him no choice, and Oleksii had to become ... a professional athlete.
— To begin with, I do not like when they write about me. There are two reasons for that. First: few people really do understand my sport (bullet shooting – editor’s note). The second: it all comes down to - “oh, what a fine fellow you are, after such an injury to start doing sports!” ... I had nowhere to retreat. It happened that almost the same day, when that fall happened to me, I decided to abandon shooting. I already had a number of awards at the regional and national levels. I showed good results. But I have already decided for myself that I will earn for living in some other way. Since childhood, I dreamed of a sports career, and as soon as I firmly decided to abandon my dream, life gave me a hard push. It was almost always like that, but “the last time” fate decided everything for me. I had no other way. Besides, I understood that with disability, I could hardly fully do something else other than shooting, Oleksii admits.
He started to train children in Vinnytsia. Later he began to participate in competitions among physically disabled athletes.
- Probably, someone would like to hear from me a story about how “the guy fights for his life, then gets up from the wheelchair, takes the first step, learns sport and wins everyone”. They perceive me through the prism of the fact that I “fell” and “stood up”. But it wasn’t like that. It was as if I had been “carried” by the flow. I had everything and so it was predetermined, - Oleksii Denysiuk keeps telling.
In fact, all shooter’s friends and acquaintances have a slightly different opinion: a terrible trauma, numerous operations, doctors' forecasts and lameness did not get him down. Instead of coming to terms with his fate, he himself found various exercises on the Internet and restored his body, growling from pain. Without self-pity, he regained his athletic physique in the gym or on the old horizontal bars at the stadium near the house. And, of course, he persisted doing his favorite sport - pistol shooting. In fact, Oleksii really made a magic, even if his maximalism does not allow him to admit it and dozens of international awards are more proof of this.
— Now, I am very often abroad. I have been to the USA and Germany, the United Arab Emirates and South Korea and to many other countries. Almost all the time I do my thing as a coach and teach others, - says Oleksii.
But the most significant and memorable for him was the participation in the Paralympics 2016 in Rio de Janeiro. Then Oleksii won bronze.
- I dreamed all my life of getting to the Olympic Games. I watched it on TV and imagined how I would perform there. And, now, I got to the Paralympics 2016. On the one hand, it was unpleasant, because I wanted to compete with healthy athletes. On the other hand, I felt the Olympic spirit, felt the joy of rivalry. But all the same, I dream of getting to the Olympics, - says athlete.
Despite winning the summer championship of Ukraine among healthy athletes his summer, Oleksii assesses his chances of getting into the Olympic team critically:
- So far, my results, my indicators do not allow me joining the Olympic team. But somehow I already succeeded on that way. In addition, in sports for disabled people, I initially started shooting while standing, although I could do it while sitting. Now all my efforts are aimed at transferring the current successes to the “common sports” ground.
It is worth noting that all his life Oleksii was fond of not only sports, but also philosophy, medicine, history and anthropology. In combination with challenges met, this allowed him drawing one interesting conclusion:
- One time after injury, I began to feel sorry for myself; became lazy. And everything was against me. But as soon as I said to myself: “Stop whining!” and Act and Everything have Changed.” People began to appear by chance from somewhere, they were ready to help me with their knowledge and moral support. Everything began to turn out. And I understood: if you are ready to change your life, then fate, the whole world, God or nature (whatever) will always help you. Success comes to those who act. I realized that even if I were on a deserted island, I would soon find a palm tree, similar to a horizontal bar, and another day - a crevice, similar to bars. And yet, by coincidence, it would have turned out that there was another survivor on the island, and he was a rehabilitologist, - says Oleksii with a smile.
He believes that everyone can be motivated. And each person can be helped to understand himself. In this case, the shooter speaks of coaching motivators and psychoanalysts with a skeptical grin. A man who has risen to the pedestal of international competitions literally from the next world, became convinced: they could help but not everyone. Likewise he takes a trend for healthy lifestyles and sports that flooded social networks.
- Of course, a healthy lifestyle is great. But now it is largely a fashion imposed from the outside. Moreover, often it has nothing to do with the very idea of health. After all, not everyone really wants to go to the gym or eat the right food. Glamorous selfies in the gym against the bars that the author of the photo was hardly holding always make me laugh. Just as those who claim that they eat the “right” food, while drinking alcohol and breathing in dirty air of big cities. Sport should be your personal choice, and not the result of “ape”, imposed on you by mass fashion. Otherwise, it can have the opposite effect, - the athlete states.
Today Oleksii Denysiuk keeps walking his path to his dream - participation in the Olympic Games. Most of his life consists of daily training and regular competitions in Ukraine and abroad. And he himself is a vivid example of the statement: “Fate helps only those who help themselves”!
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