When Ukrainian climber Jenya Kazbekova was woken at 5am by the sounds of bombs falling outside her home in Kyiv, she barely had time to process that her life was about to change.
“It was one of the most horrifying experiences I’ve ever had in my life,” she said.
“I woke up, looked at my mum because we shared a bedroom and was like, what was that? What are those sounds? And then it happened again.
“We pulled out our phones and started looking on social media and there was news all over that it started – explosions all over Ukraine. I just remember trying to pack up my stuff and my hands would not stop shaking.”
Two years on, the 27-year-old sport climber is preparing to compete in the boulder and lead event at the Paris Olympics.
That is something she could not imagine when she and her family joined millions who fled Ukraine after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022.
“Everyone was leaving. Everyone was trying to escape. It was just a horrible time where you don’t really have food, you don’t really have anything and you’re not allowed to stop,” she told BBC Radio 5 Live.
Along with her sister and parents, Kazbekova drove for four days to reach Germany before having to wait for two days to cross the Polish border.
“You keep going – sometimes you’re in this five-kilometre line to the border and you move five metres every few minutes. You cannot sleep. You cannot properly take care of yourself,” she said.
“We arrived in Germany fully exhausted, and even though it was a really hard experience, we were still privileged enough to have the possibility to escape in the first place because so many people had to stay behind.”
‘Why am I competing when people in my country are dying?’
Climbing remained the one constant for Kazbekova, her primary “coping mechanism” during a time of upheaval and trauma.
She has since moved to Salt Lake City in the United States while her family settled in Manchester.
But with her grandparents still back in her hometown of Dnipro after they made the difficult decision to stay in Ukraine, Kazbekova said she felt “lost” getting on with her life while knowing what was happening in her home country.
Her coach Malik – who himself fled war in his home country of Lebanon aged 18 – helped her to understand why it was still important to pursue her dreams.
“He knew exactly what I was going through without even me having to tell him anything and he was the person that walked me out of my darkness when I was just feeling really lost for months,” Kazbekova said.
“I didn’t see purpose in climbing. Why am I doing competitions when people back in my country are dying?
“He was the person that made me realise how important it is that I do show up and if just maybe I manage to make a single person care a little bit more, donate a little bit more that’s all I can ask for.”
Climbing is ‘part of my family’
For Kazbekova, climbing is not just a sport. It’s a “generational thing”.
Her grandparents and parents all competed at international level in the sport and Kazbekova recalls her parents taking her with them to world cups and championships.
“Climbing is really like a part of my family,” she said. “It’s the thing that kept me sane during the first months of the war. That was the only time I could put my phone down and concentrate on myself and stop updating the news and stop worrying and just do what I love.”
Now, Kazbekova’s sights are firmly set on this summer’s Olympics in Paris, where sport climbing is appearing for just the second time.
Kazbekova will make her Olympic debut as she missed out on Tokyo three years ago after suffering with injury before testing positive for Covid, preventing her from competing at a qualifying event which provided the last opportunity to reach the Olympics.
“Being in Paris, being able to put my Ukrainian uniform on and show the world how resilient Ukrainians can be – that’s the dream come true. That’s the biggest motivation I have for now,” she said.
Kazbekova booked her place in Paris through the Olympic Qualifier Series in Shanghai and Budapest last month, where she finished sixth overall.
“How much it means right now for Ukraine to have representation out there in the world to keep reminding people that we still need help, we still need support,” she said.
“We are still struggling so much and this fight, it matters.”
