It is 4:00 in the morning, sirens are howling outside. It’s the second week of the war. For a moment, you wonder whether to douse the alarm. After all, instead of sitting in the basement, all you have to do is hide your head under your pillow. And so, what is meant to be will be… However, two streets away yesterday you saw a hole in the ground left by a Russian bomb where someone’s house used to be. It motivates you to get up. You don’t even have to get dressed, because you’ve been sleeping in your
clothes for a week. All you have to do is slip your feet into your shoes, throw on your jacket and make your way to the dark, damp burrow where you used to go only to get your bike. At the last minute you still grab a stale bread roll from last week and a bottle of water from the kitchen.
10 days ago, you would have been woken up by the alarm clock on your phone set for 5:00 to catch your morning wall workout, before school. Back then, you hated that silly tune that was supposedly gently yet firmly meant to get you out of your warm bed. Today you would give a lot to go back to it. Now you don’t have to set an alarm clock. You won’t go to any more training, because the hall where the wall is now houses a temporary hospital, and Sasha – your trainer has been called up to the army. In 2 months you were supposed to go to the Junior European Cup in Austria, and in the summer maybe to the Championships in the USA.
World Championships – your biggest dream turns out to be impossible to realise. You spent every free moment pursuing one goal. All your efforts and daily sacrifices turn out to be worthless. Your priorities have seriously changed and the most important thing becomes safety and where to hide or perhaps how to escape from a country at war.
And what if such a situation befalls your child or your loved ones? Your whole life has been subordinated to a sporting passion, you have spent countless hours training and now it turns out to be for nothing. It doesn’t take much for a sporting career to go to ruin along with more Ukrainian cities. Let us not allow this to happen!
The Polish Mountaineering Association, through the PZA4UA campaign is organising help for young climbers who have been forced to leave their country because of the war. These are 30 climbers who continue their training mainly in Bytom and Wrocław. They are real people, real dreams and real successes, which they achieve thanks to the financial support of the Polish Mountaineering Association.
You can also help! Every amount of money and your help in promoting the action or sharing a link to the droplet is your contribution to the success of these young athletes. They train, do not give up and win more medals for their country in international climbing competitions.
Achievements of Ukrainian athletes in international competitions since the beginning of the campaign:
Bank account + IBAN
PL41 1140 2004 0000 3802 8097 6611
