During the race, 150,000 hryvnias were collected for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. They will be transferred to the “Return Alive” fund.
On Sunday, July 16, the Gran Fondo cycling race took place in the Lviv region. More than three hundred cyclists took part in them. They covered 85 kilometers on the roads of Lviv and Drohobytsky districts. The Lviv Bicycle Club race was organized with the support of the Department of Youth and Sports of the Lviv OVA.
Among those who overcame the distance, 37-year-old master of sports of Ukraine Pavlo Bal. After a high limb amputation, Pavlo moves around in a wheelchair, so he also had a special bicycle for the races. The athlete covered the distance using a handbike, a three-wheeled bicycle that has a slightly different design and is powered by hands. Pavlov managed to cover 85 kilometers in 2 hours 35 minutes 30 seconds.
“The course was difficult, the distance was quite long. I was only 25 minutes behind the leader of the race, so I am generally satisfied with the result. For me, this is a control start before international competitions – the World Championship in cycling among para-athletes. It will take place in August. To get there, I went to Belgium for the World Cup stage. I earned my first points there, and also passed the medical commission, which is mandatory for the Paralympic championships, in order to determine my class and compete in equal competition,” says Pavlo.
Pavlo has been involved in Paralympic sports for several years, his main disciplines are biathlon and cross-country skiing. In 2021, he became the biathlon world champion among athletes with musculoskeletal disorders.
“I became interested in handbikes in 2019. First of all, in order to diversify the training process and improve results in winter sports. The fact is that sedentary athletes have very little variety in training, they work the same muscles. This is my third handbike. It was not easy. At first it was metal. Then, with coaches and friends, they searched for a better one for a long time and finally found a master who agreed to make an aluminum one. It was a very good bike, but it was enough for me mainly for the training process. And finally, last year there was a cross-country race, the kind on which Paralympic champions compete. With such a bike, it is a sin not to perform at the international level,” says Pavlo Bal.
The athlete is trained by Anatoly Zaveedev, as well as Bohdan Dobryanskyi at the Lviv regional center “Invasport”. Last year, the Department of Youth and Sports of the Lviv Oblast helped Pavel acquire the last handbike within the framework of the Comprehensive Program for the Development of Physical Culture and Sports of the Lviv Oblast.
“It so happened that this summer the athletes keep proving to us that last year we correctly assessed their potential. Recently, Valeria Tereta, from whom we bought a boat, became the champion of the European Games, as well as masters of bullet shooting Pavlo and Yulia Korostylovi, for whom we bought pistols, also won gold awards, and now Pavlo has shown an excellent result, and later, we believe, he will show it and at international competitions,” says Roman Khimyak, head of the youth and sports department of the Lviv OVA.
It should be noted that 150,000 hryvnias were collected for the Armed Forces of Ukraine during the Gran Fondo bicycle marathon. They will be transferred to the “Return Alive” fund.