“This could be the last starting line of my life,” says the Ukrainian who has served his country in both the ultracarriage and the war with Russia.
Andrii Tkachuk is no stranger to sacrifice. At last month’s IAU 24-Hour World Championships, he became the first Ukrainian to take the gold medal in the event’s 24-year history, running a total of 294.346 km (182.8 miles) in one day.
Such was the dominance of his victory that he finished just nine kilometers ahead of Norway’s Jo Inge Norum, a difference greater than the margin between second and fifth place.
It was a moment that fulfilled a long-cherished dream. Since he started ultra running in 2012 (his first race was a 50km race through the Carpathians), Tkachuk had imagined raising his national flag above his head as a world champion.
“I climbed the mountain,” he says in his first interview since taking the podium in Albi, France, on October 18. “I managed to achieve my dream, but the unfortunate reality is that life is still very hard and difficult.”
What Tkachuk is referring to is the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia, a conflict he knows very well, having spent 14 months of his life fighting for his country’s freedom.
Now that his ambition to become a world champion has been fulfilled, he is considering returning to the army and returning to the heat of battle.
“This could be the last starting point of my life,” he tells AW, adding that a final decision will be made in the next two or three months.
‘The wait at the border was more than 10 hours’
Tkachuk’s preparation for this year’s IAU 24 Hour World Championships was not easy.
In March he was diagnosed with Achilles tendinitis and doctors told him he needed to do a variety of exercises such as swimming and cycling to improve it. Running, however, was out of the question.
With the October championships already in mind, he ignored the advice and ran a total of 600 km in May and then won the 100 km Ukrainian Trail Championships a month later.
“When I ran in the mountains my Achilles tendon hurt less,” Tkachuk says.
However, his rehabilitation was slowed when, during a 100-mile competition in Ukraine in August, he competed with a fever. Victory could have been secured in three hours, but the recovery was longer than usual.
Tkachuk then decided to represent Ukraine at September’s World Mountain and Trail Running Championships in Canfranc-Pirineos, Spain. He finished in 121st place in the Long Trail category, a distance of 82 km.
Since there are no commercial flights in or out of Ukraine due to the ongoing war, traveling to Europe is a challenge. Tkachuk still lives in a single-story house that belonged to his grandfather in Khust – a town just north of the Romanian border and east of the Hungarian border – and travels north to Poland to catch connecting flights.
Not only is it a six-hour drive to the border, but, as expected, there are still long queues between Ukraine and Poland. “The wait at the border was more than 10 hours when I traveled to the championship,” he says.
After crossing the border, Tkachuk took a flight from Poland to Toulouse and arrived in Albi just before the start of the championship. Still carrying the 20 kilo backpack he packed in Khust, the Ukrainian arrived at his accommodation exhausted, but the most important race of his career awaited him.
“I knew my competitors would end up failing”
There were two predominant thoughts in Tkachuk’s mind as he took the start line at the IAU 24 Hour World Championships.
His first goal was not to stop at all for any food. “I prepared my gels beforehand with a combination of maltodextrin and fructose,” he says. “I took them while I was running, every half hour. Then, in the intervals between this liquid meal, I also took 200 g of isotonic water, cola and mineral water. I had the support of a friend named Maria Moskalets to prepare all this.”
Tkachuk’s second goal was to survive until nightfall. He admits he first felt a “crash” after three hours due to the warm 25°C temperatures in Albi and had to make changes to his eating and drinking schedule as a result.
Starting with a pace of 4:27 per kilometer, which he says is slower than his normal training pace, Tkachuk’s ambition was to make it halfway in one piece and then keep going.
“I didn’t pay attention to how fast I was going for the first 12 hours because I knew my competitors would start first but then slow down and eventually fail,” he tells AW.
Tkachuk, a seven-time national champion in 24- and 48-hour ultramarathon races, had every right to be confident. This was only accentuated by the fact that two of his main rivals, Belgians Mattieu Bonne and Aleksandr Sorokin, were not competing.
“I understood that the space was empty, so I could take the title,” Tkachuk explains. Incredibly, his first bathroom stop was after 13 hours, even after he had drunk 10 liters of liquid up to that point.
As the hours passed, the greater the likelihood that Tkachuk would win the gold medal. Your official distance at the end? A remarkable 294,346 km (182.8 miles).
To put it into perspective, that’s a pace of 4:54/km for an entire day. That’s the equivalent of running a 24:28 5K, 48:55 10K, 1:43:13 half marathon, or 3:26:26 marathon for a full 24 hours.
After appreciating his achievement, Tkachuk took the podium and, with the Ukrainian flag displayed above his head on a screen, sang the national anthem.
“I wanted to sing my anthem as a winner and not just as a participant,” Tkachuk says.
“I felt like Rambo”
Tkachuk’s childhood was spent much of it, even with poor eyesight, reading adventure books. Although he only has two percent vision in his left eye, he was fascinated by the outdoors and experiencing new places.
Captain of the academic decathlon team, he was also fiercely competitive and eventually took up cross-country skiing, courtesy of a neighbor.
However, the financial realities of the sport soon prevailed. Tkachuk’s family had no money and subsequently worked various jobs, including in government and construction.
In 2016, Tkachuk, who at the time was already beginning to make a name for himself in ultra running, worked in the police and, with a deep understanding of the region’s geopolitical climate, knew that Russia was in the process of strengthening its military forces.
Barely two years had passed since Russia invaded Crimea and Tkachuk, eager to serve his country, had already offered to enlist in the army. “They asked me to be accepted as a soldier, but they rejected me because of my eyesight,” he says.
Six years later he tried again. On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion against Ukraine. Tkachuk knew he had to fight.
“It was an easy decision to sign up and fight for my country,” he says. “It wasn’t just about running, it was about the existence of Ukraine. It was a broader goal.”
Just over a week after Russian tanks invaded Ukrainian territory, Tkachuk marched, as part of the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade, toward Zaporizhzhia. The city, which is just east of the Dnieper River, was bombed and ended up taking refuge in a town called Mali Shcherbaky.
Full of adrenaline and with an anti-tank weapon in hand, Tkachuk was positioned on the outskirts of the village with other Ukrainian soldiers. They waited and waited for the Russians to advance.
“I felt like Rambo,” he jokes. “Because of my eyesight, I was very good at firing the gun from my right side. The Russian army was very well equipped, but we were fighting for our country.”
“It was almost impossible to hide from the Russians”
On the front lines, Tkachuk witnessed many horrors, but the sound of Russian helicopters overhead is still etched in his mind. One of the biggest problems he and his fellow soldiers had to face was the difficulty of finding shelter, since most of the village’s infrastructure had already been destroyed.
“There were no hills or mountains and it was flat terrain,” he explains. “Only a few trees remained standing that once protected the crops from the winds in the fields. It was almost impossible to hide from the Russians.”
For hours and hours, Tkachuk and his brigade anticipated attacks but they never came. Russian helicopters came and went. An eerie silence filled the air.
But then a Russian helicopter spotted the men and they were hit by what Tkachuk believes were “120 millimeter cannons” and “cluster bombs.”
Tkachuk, who was in a barn when this occurred, was shot in the hand and his arm was hit by shrapnel. He was also worried about his heart at the time, given that he had Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, a birth defect that causes a dangerously fast heart rate.
“I’ve had this condition since I was 15,” he says, adding that he underwent a five-hour surgery in April 2023 to help fix the problem. “Due to stress, I paid more attention to my heart problem during the war. In fact, I felt like I could die because my heart would stop. My main worry was that if I died I wouldn’t be able to help other people.”
Once the explosions were over, a car arrived to evacuate Tkachuk and the wounded in his brigade. However, they did not have enough space for him and priority was given to soldiers with leg wounds.
In below-freezing temperatures, Tkachuk and several others walked through the night, eventually stopping in an open field to rest and await evacuation in the morning.
“We don’t want to just survive”
Over a 14-month period, Tkachuk fought for Ukraine, but never gave up hope of competing for his nation on the world stage again.
His willingness to run for Ukraine was such that, even during military service, he would get up at 4 a.m. to increase his training load.
After successful surgery for his Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, Tkachuk had even more motivation and quickly set his sights on the 2023 IAU 24 Hour World Championships in Taiwan.
At this stage of the war he had been transferred back to his hometown, Khust, to work in the army recruiting office, but was initially told by his supervisor that he could not travel.
However, after lobbying the government, the Defense Minister’s office granted him permission to go to Taiwan and represent Ukraine. Tkachuk did not let his country down.
He came third behind Sorokin and the Greek Fotios Zisimopoulos with a total of 284.540 km, becoming the first Ukrainian to get on the podium in the championship.
His gold medal would come this year and, while he is delighted to inspire his fellow Ukrainians, he is keenly aware that there is a bigger task at hand.
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“It’s an incredible feeling to be able to inspire people to not give up, especially considering that the circumstances in Ukraine are still very difficult,” he says. “This is an existential issue for our country and we don’t want to just survive, it’s about victory. That’s why I’ve thought about joining the army again. The war doesn’t look like it’s going to end and for me it’s a logical step to return to the front.
“If I had a message for the people of Ukraine it is that, at some point, all wars come to an end. And, at that time, we will be able to enjoy sports and normal life again.”
