“This could be the last start line of my life,” says the Ukrainian who has served his country in both ultra-running and in the war with Russia.
Andrii Tkachuk is no stranger to sacrifice. At last month’s IAU 24-Hour World Championships, he became the first ever Ukrainian to secure the gold medal in the event’s 24-year history, running a total of 294.346km (182.8 miles) in one day.
Such was the dominance of his victory that he finished just short of nine kilometres ahead of Norway’s Jo Inge Norum – a gap greater than the margin between second and fifth place.
It was a moment that fulfilled a long-held dream. Since he began ultra-running back in 2012 – his first race was a 50km trail run through the Carpathian Mountains – Tkachuk had visualised lifting his national flag above his head as a world champion.
“I climbed the mountain,” he says, in his first interview since topping 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 that he knows all too well, having spent 14 months of his life fighting for his country’s freedom.
Now that the ambition to become a world champion has been fulfilled, he is considering returning to the army and heading back into the heat of battle.
“This could be the last start line of my life,” he tells AW, adding that a final decision will be made in the next two to three months.
‘The wait at the border was over 10 hours’
Tkachuk’s preparation for this year’s IAU 24-Hour World Championships was not straightforward.
In March he was diagnosed with Achilles tendonitis and was told by doctors that he needed to do a variety of exercises such as swimming and cycling to improve it. Running, however, was off the cards.
With October’s championships already on his mind, he ignored the advice and ran a total of 600km in May and then won the 100km Ukrainian Trail Championships a month later.
“When I ran in the mountains my Achilles was less painful,” Tkachuk says.
However, his rehabilitation was slowed down when, during a 100-mile competition in Ukraine in August, he competed with a temperature. Victory might have been secured by three hours but the recovery was longer than usual.
Tkachuk then decided to represent Ukraine in September’s World Mountain and Trail Running Championships in Canfranc-Pirineos, Spain. He finished 121st in the Long Trail category – a distance of 82km.
Given there are no commercial flights in or out of Ukraine due to the ongoing war, travelling to Europe is challenging. Tkachuk still lives in a one-storey house that once belonged to his grandfather in Khust – a city located just north of the Romanian and east of the Hungarian border – and travels northwards to Poland to catch connecting flights.
Not only is it a six-hour drive to the border but there are still, unsurprisingly, long queues between Ukraine and Poland. “The wait at the border was over 10 hours when I was travelling to the championships,” he says.
After eventually passing through the border, Tkachuk caught a flight from Poland to Toulouse and arrived in Albi just before the start of the championships. Still carrying the 20kg rucksack he packed in Khust, the Ukrainian was exhausted when he arrived at his accommodation, but the biggest race of his career awaited.
‘I knew my competitors would eventually fail’
There were two prevailing thoughts in Tkachuk’s mind when he took to the start line at the IAU 24-Hour World Championships.
His first aim was to not stop at all for any food. “I made my gels beforehand with a combination of maltodextrin and fructose,” he says. “I had these, while running, every half hour. Then, in the gaps between this liquid food, I also had 200g of isotonic, cola and mineral water. I had support from a friend called Maria Moskalets in preparing all of this.”
Tkachuk’s second goal was to survive until the night. He admits that he first felt a “crisis” after three hours due to the warm 25C conditions in Albi and needed to make changes to his eating and drinking schedule as a result.
Starting with a pace of 4:27 for each kilometre, which he says is slower than his normal training pace, Tkachuk’s ambition was to get to half-way in one piece and then plough on.
“I didn’t pay attention to how fast I was for the first 12 hours as I knew my competitors would start first but then slow down and eventually fail,” he tells AW.
A seven-time national champion in 24-hour and 48-hour ultra marathon races, Tkachuk had every right to be confident. This was only emphasised by the fact that two of his main rivals, Belgium’s Mattieu Bonne and Aleksandr Sorokin, weren’t competing.
“I understood the space was empty so I could take the title,” Tkachuk explains. Incredibly, his first toilet stop was after 13 hours, even after having drunk 10 litres of liquid up until that point.
As the hours ticked over, the higher the probability that Tkachuk would secure the gold medal. His official distance at the end? A remarkable 294.346km (182.8 miles).
To put that into perspective, it’s 4:54/km pace for a whole day. That’s the equivalent of running a 24:28 5km, 48:55 10km, 1:43:13 half-marathon or 3:26:26 marathon for an entire 24 hours.
After taking in his achievement, Tkachuk made his way to 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 a participant,” Tkachuk says.
‘I felt like Rambo’
Tkachuk’s childhood was largely spent, even with poor eyesight, reading adventure books. Even though he only has two per cent of vision in his left eye, he was fascinated by the outdoors and experiencing new places.
The captain of the academic decathlon team, he was also fiercely competitive and eventually signed up, courtesy of a neighbour, to cross-country skiing.
However the financial realities of the sport soon set in. Tkachuk’s family were not blessed with money and he subsequently worked in a number of jobs, including in both government and construction.
In 2016 Tkachuk, who at this point was already starting to make a name for himself in ultra-running, worked in the police and, with a deep understanding of the region’s geo-political climate, knew that Russia was in the process of building up its military forces.
Just two years had passed since Russia invaded Crimea and Tkachuk, keen to serve his country, had already offered to join the military. “I was asked to be taken as a soldier but they turned me down 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 that he had to fight.
“It was an easy decision to sign up and fight for my country,” he says. “This wasn’t just about running, it’s about the existence of Ukraine. This was a bigger aim.”
Just over a week after Russian tanks rolled on to Ukrainian territory, Tkachuk marched, as part of the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade, towards Zaporizhzhia. The city, which is just east of the Dnipro River, was shelled and he ended up being based in a village called Mali Shcherbaky.
Filled with adrenaline and an anti-tank gun in hand, Tkachuk was positioned on the edge of the village with a number of other Ukrainian soldiers. They waited and waited for the advancing Russians.
“I felt like Rambo,” he jokes. “Due to my eyesight I was very good at shooting the gun from my right hand side. The Russian Army was so well equipped but we were fighting for our country.”
‘It was almost impossible to hide from the Russians’
On the front line, Tkachuk witnessed many horrors but the sound of the Russian helicopters overhead still sticks in his mind. One of the biggest issues that both he and his fellow soldiers had to face was the difficulty of finding cover, given most of the infrastructure in the village had already been destroyed.
“There were no hills or mountains and it was plain land,” he explains. “There were only a few trees, which once protected crops from the winds in the fields, left standing. It was almost impossible to hide from the Russians.”
For hours upon hours, Tkachuk and his brigade anticipated attacks but they never arrived. Russian helicopters came and went. An eerie quietness filled the air.
But, then, a Russian helicopter spotted the men and they were hit with what Tkachuk believes were “120 millimetre guns” and “cluster bombs”.
Tkachuk, located in a barn when this happened, was shot in the hand and his arm was hit by shrapnel. He was also concerned about his heart at this point, given that he had Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, a congenital defect which causes a dangerously fast heartbeat.
“I had the condition since I was 15 years old,” he says, adding that he had a five-hour surgery in April 2023 to help fix the issue. “Due to the stress, I paid more attention to my heart issue during the war. I actually felt I could die because my heart would stop. My main concern was that if I died I couldn’t help other people.”
After the explosions had ended, a car came to evacuate Tkachuk and those who had been injured in his brigade. However, they didn’t have enough space for him and the soldiers with leg wounds were prioritised.
In sub-zero temperatures, Tkachuk and a number of others walked through the night and eventually stopped in an open field to rest and await evacuation in the morning.
‘We don’t want to just survive’
Over a period of 14 months, Tkachuk fought for Ukraine but he never lost hope of competing for his nation on the global stage again.
Such was his will to run for Ukraine that, even during military service, he woke up at 4am to increase his training load.
Off the back of the successful surgery for his Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, Tkachuk had even more motivation and quickly set his eyes on the 2023 IAU 24-Hour World Championships in Taiwan.
At this stage of the war he had been transferred back to his home city of Khust to work in the army recruitment office, but he was initially told by his supervisor he couldn’t travel.
However, after lobbying the government, the Minister of Defence’s office granted him leave to go to Taiwan and represent Ukraine. Tkachuk didn’t let his country down.
He placed third behind Sorokin and Greece’s Fotios Zisimopoulos with a total of 284.540km, becoming the first Ukrainian to make the podium at the championships.
His gold medal would follow this year and, while he is delighted to be inspiring his fellow Ukrainians, he is all too aware that there is a bigger task at hand.
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“It’s an amazing feeling that I’m inspiring people to not give up, especially given the circumstances in Ukraine are still really hard,” he says. “This is an existential question for our country and we don’t want to just survive – this is about victory. So I have therefore had thoughts about joining the army again. The war doesn’t seem like it’s stopping and it’s a logical step for me to go back to the front line.
“If I had a message to the people of Ukraine it’s that, at some point, all wars come to an end. And, at that moment, we can enjoy sport and regular life again.”
