PARIS — A handshake could have cost Olga Kharlan her place at the Olympics. Instead, she won Ukraine’s first medal of the Paris Games to give a country at war something to celebrate.
Kharlan overturned a six-point deficit to beat South Korea’s Choi Sebin 15-14 for the women’s saber fencing bronze medal Monday in a comeback that energized the crowd.
She counted to five on a hand decorated with nail varnish in Ukrainian yellow and blue, a five-time Olympian winning her fifth career medal.
Kharlan’s latest medal is nothing like the others.
“I brought a medal to my country, and it’s the first one, and it’s going to be a good start for all our athletes who are here because it’s really tough to compete when in your country is a war,” she said. “Every medal, it’s like gold. I don’t care [that] it’s bronze. It’s gold.”
Kharlan was disqualified from last year’s world championships — a key Olympic qualifier — for refusing to shake the hand of a Russian opponent after winning their bout.
It was an incident that highlighted the tension over whether to allow Russian athletes to keep competing following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Amid a mounting backlash, the International Olympic Committee stepped in to hand Kharlan a “unique exception” — a guaranteed spot at the Games. Fencing’s governing body rescinded a two-month ban it had imposed along with the disqualification and made handshakes optional soon after.
“I can say that I wouldn’t change anything,” Kharlan said about whether she had thought her Olympic dream was over. “What I went through, it represents my country, what it goes through, and I wouldn’t change anything. This is my story.”
Loud crowd gets a gold
The vocal — even rowdy — French crowd has been a revelation in the usually genteel world of fencing.
The vast and spectacular Grand Palais echoed to cheers, boos and the French national anthem over the first three days of Olympic fencing. Sometimes the crowd stomps until the tall metal stands rattle.
What they hadn’t seen until Monday was a French gold.
They got it as two French fencers, Sara Balzer and Manon Apithy-Brunet, advanced to face each other in the women’s saber final. Apithy-Brunet won her third Olympic medal and first gold 15-12 in a celebration of French fencing as every touch for either fencer greeted with cheers and warm applause.
Until then, French fencers had contested two finals and lost both, with Auriane Mallo-Breton second in women’s epee Saturday and Yannick Borel the runner-up in men’s epee a day later.
The men’s foil final was later Monday.
