Ukrainian skateboarders Yurii Korotun from Klavdiievo and Bohdan Porada from Lubny have received a 25,000-dollar scholarship from the International Olympic Committee. It will reimburse the cost of the athletes’ participation in a series of qualifying tournaments for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Korotun and Porada are the first riders in the history of Ukrainian skateboarding who officially represent Ukraine in Olympic qualifying
Ukrainian skateboarders received the scholarship as part of the Olympic Solidarity program, which helps professional athletes prepare and qualify for the Olympic Games. Maksym Karpenko, manager of Bohdan Porada and Yurii Korotun, applied for the scholarship.
‘I submitted the application through the director of the World Skate skateboarding department, Luca Basilico, who passed it to Olympic Solidarity. The IOC considered our documents for about a month before approving the scholarship, and after that the WS director Sabatino Araku sent a letter to the Ukrainian Roller Sports Federation (the WS representative in Ukraine) to grant the scholarship to our skaters’, Karpenko told DTF Magazine in a comment.
The scholarship will be split between the two riders, and should cover all expenses for those qualifying stages still left in the Olympic cycle — one of the tournaments begins Sept. 12 in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Korotun and Porada have received an invitation to compete in the Olympic qualifiers from World Skate in June 2023.
Further Olympic qualifiers in the street category in which Yurii and Bohdan are eligible to take part include tournaments in Lausanne, Switzerland (Sept. 12-16), Japan (Dec. 10-17) and Sharjah, UAE (Jan. 2024).
The first qualifying tournament, in which Porada and Korotun participated, was held in Rome on June 22-23. Qualification took place on June 22, and quarterfinals, semifinals and finals — on June 23.
As a result of the competition in Rome, Porada took 55th place among 156 competitors. To pass to the next round of the competition, the quarterfinals, it was necessary to enter the top-27. Yurii Korotun took 75th place.
