The European Championship in para rowing took place in the city of Plovdiv, gathering participants with musculoskeletal injuries from 30 countries.
From the Donetsk region, two athletes from the regional center for physical culture and sports for people with disabilities "Invasport" successfully represented the Ukrainian team.
Roman Polyansky from Bakhmut won a silver medal in the men's single sculls competition in the PR1M1x class. In the final, he completed the 2000 m distance with a time of 8 minutes 51.93 seconds – Roman outpaced competitors from Italy, France, Spain, Israel, but lost to a rower from Great Britain.
Yaroslav Koyuda from Sloviansk, together with Anna Aisanova from the Volyn region, became silver medalists in the mixed doubles PR2Mix2x competition. Their result was 8 minutes 6.93 seconds – they were faster than the Israelis in the final but slower than the Germans.
Overall, Ukrainian Paralympians in Bulgaria won 1 gold, 2 silver, and 1 bronze medal. As a result, our athletes ranked first in the total number of awards and second in gold medals at the European Championship.
Roman Polyansky and Yaroslav Koyuda are honored masters of sports of Ukraine in para rowing. Their coaches are the Ukrainian national team trainers Vyacheslav Zahreba and Georgiy Verteletskiy.