December 24, 2020

Ukrainian Pro Sports Update: Paralympics

Ukrainian Romanchuk sets unofficial world record
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Daniel Romanchuk, who set an unofficial world record in wheelchair division of the 2020 New York Marathon (virtual), in a photo from the 2019 Boston Marathon.

The Fall 2020 issue of Sports Illustrated featured Ukrainian Daniel Romanchuk in its Scorecard’s Faces in the Crowd section. The 22-year-old Paralympian, who has spina bifida, was acknowledged for setting an unofficial world record for a wheelchair racer with his time of 1:13:57 seconds, covering 26.2 miles at the virtual New York City Marathon in October 2020. This achievement came on the heels of his becoming the youngest winner of the Boston Marathon’s wheelchair division in 2019, which he followed up with additional victories in London, Chicago and New York.

Romanchuk was using the virtual race as a training run, but unexpectedly went off on a record pace on a straight, flat surface. The official world record was 1:20:14 seconds, set by Swiss Heinz Frei in 1999.

This year, October 22 was a clear day just outside of Champaign, Ill. He took off on farm roads with his Polar and Garmin GPS trackers set, a mostly straight, north-south course he had completed several times prior. His mother, Kimberly, drove a car behind him, providing protection from passing vehicles.

It was his fourth marathon-distance workout in eight weeks, not abnormal for elite wheelchair marathoners. In a normal fall season, racers can hit three marathon majors in a span of some six weeks. Romanchuk’s training will adjust as he prepares for another odd, potentially very busy year of racing in 2021. The postponed Paralympic Games come up in August 2021, along with all marathon majors (except Boston) in the second half of the year. This could mean seven races for Romanchuk and others in a very short time span.

Even though he broke a record, Romanchuk has set his sights on pushing his limits farther.

“Honestly, this goes down to my general view on records and things like that,” he told Runners World in an October 28 interview with this author. “I view records as limits to be pushed, not something to be owned. At the end of the day, someone else is going to come along and they’re going to be faster, and that’s great because it means the sport is progressing.”

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