Olympic medal machine Victor Kovalenko: ‘They said I can make a choice to sail for Russia or Ukraine’

Victor Kovalenko is going to be the star of a movie. A biopic based on the life of Australia’s most celebrated sailing coach has been in filming for months. Well, it was, until the Ukrainian actor playing him went to war with Russia.

“He is now on the frontline as a volunteer,” Kovalenko says. “He was in the war before, like in 2014, 2015 and 2016, also as a volunteer. Now he’s [an] officer and he has a lot of experience. They’ve done part of the film in Ukraine. They were supposed to do a little bit more, but now it’s war.”

Vladimir Putin “will not stop”, he says. “He has no brakes, only accelerator.”

Kovalenko is ensconced in the incomparable setting of Sydney’s Middle Harbour Yacht Club, where the water catches the sun and not a gunshot can be heard. But, like many others, the 72-year-old holds tight his ties to his homeland, and the people in it.

“I have my sister, my nephews,” he says, “and the sister of my wife, relatives, a lot of my friends and a lot of my athletes. My family is fine. Others, they are fighting. One of my athletes recently was injured – he lost one leg.”

The film, titled Storm School, also retraces the careers of two-time Olympic gold medallist Mat Belcher and Chinese racer Xu Lijia. Kovalenko’s story is one of almost two separate lives. The first in Soviet-era Ukraine, where he was a multiple sailing champion and then a medal-winning Olympic coach. The other in Australia, where he has lived for 25 years and steered his adopted nation to unprecedented Olympic prosperity.

In the six Games since and including Sydney 2000, Kovalenko the coach has won six gold medals. That haul ranks him third in the world over that period, behind Great Britain (15) and Australia (10). He is a country inside one man.