KYIV: As synchronized swimmers, Maryna and Vladyslava Aleksiiva are used to having to smile no matter what. The sisters are one of Ukraine’s best hopes of a gold medal at the Paris Olympics after winning a bronze in artistic swimming at the Tokyo Games three years ago. But the trials the 23-year-old twins have been put through - forced to flee their homes, surviving shelling and sleeping in bomb shelters - have tested even their sunny stoicism. They have even had to jump out of the pool and “run to the basement in wet swimsuits” when the explosions got too close, Maryna told AFP.

Russian tanks were stopped in the suburbs of their hometown Kharkiv during the invasion almost two years ago, with the sisters having to leave their sparkly costumes behind when they were evacuated.

Regular bombardments did not stop them returning to Kharkiv to prepare for the Games, even if the windows of their training pool were broken from the missile attacks on the border city. “Everything has been bombed: our pool, where we started training, our school, our city centre,” added Maryna.

With the Russians threatening to take the city in the early days of the war, the sisters fled Kharkiv with the rest of Ukraine’s artistic swimming team and trained in Italy for six months. But they were determined to go back to Ukraine to be closer to their parents, training in Kyiv and “sleeping at night in the corridor of a bomb shelter” before returning to Kharkiv. — AFP