Ukraine Diver Oleksii Sereda Returns to Uncertainty

‘I Don’t Know if I’m Going to Be Alive’: Ukraine Diver Oleksii Sereda Returns to Uncertainty

Ukrainian diver Oleksii Sereda knows how to handle pressure. That’s true on the boards, where the 19-year-old has competed internationally since he was 13. And it applies to his life in a home county at war for three and a half years.

Sereda will bring the silver medal he won on men’s 10-meter platform at the World Championships in Singapore back to an uncertain home that has been fighting off an invasion by  Russia since 2022.

“I don’t know if I’m going to be alive,” Sereda said Sunday. “I mean, really I’m not kidding. Everything is possible. Today, in Mykolaiv, my pool where I’ve been training for five years and when I was young, was partially destroyed. And sometimes, rockets are really close, and you have no idea if you’re going to wake up again.”

Sereda hails from Mykolaiv, a Black Sea port between Kherson and Odesa in southern Ukraine. Like all athletes from his country, representing the country internationally has become a form of national service.

Sereda does that well. He’s medaled in four consecutive editions of the World Aquatics Championships dating back to 2022, with three silvers and two bronze, including consecutive medals in individual platform. In between, he finished eighth on platform and fifth in men’s platform synchro (with Kirill Boliukh) at the Paris Olympics after having been sixth in both events at age 15 in Tokyo in 2021.

The 19-year-old allowed himself some time to celebrate the achievement in Singapore. He finished second to Australian Cassiel Rousseau, with Randal Willars of Mexico third in a rare event where the Chinese powerhouse was kept off the podium.

“I feel happy,” he said. “I see that I get the silver medal, first in my life. I see progress, and I’m feeling great. It’s a really great feeling when you’re working and you get a result. So I will be working even more to be the first.”

Like many athletes, his training has been disrupted in Ukraine, forcing him to travel to Hungary and Poland for stable facilities. But then everything has been disrupted, in a country where attacks range far from the front lines via missile and drone attacks. His father is fighting at the front, a place Sereda would be if not for his talent allowing him to serve as a representative of his country in a different way.

It’s a challenge for people at home to “sleep normally, to just live normally,” and that weighs on Sereda whether he’s there or not.

“That’s why I’m feeling stressed every single day because of him, trying to call him as much as possible, because it’s really dangerous to be there,” Sereda said. “I think today he watched me. I’m not sure, because he is really close to the front, and I don’t know if he had a chance to watch me, but I think probably yes.”

Sereda’s future is as uncertain as his country’s. He’s heading back to Kyiv, the capital. He will get some time off in September. But otherwise, he’ll be working toward his craft, with the hope that it can inspire a nation in his own way.

“For Ukraine, I think that it means that we are capable to achieve great results,” he said. “We are capable to fight even in these conditions, and we are capable to win. I hope that I inspire someone. I don’t know, because I’m not a world champion, that’s why I don’t know if I can inspire someone. But anyway, I would really like this war to end as fast as possible, because it’s not normal life. It’s not how it must be.”