Olga Kharlan went to her knees, as if in disbelief, after a stirring comeback in the women’s saber fencing competition. She kissed the metallic dueling surface. Finally, she jumped into her coach’s arms and then bowed theatrically to the crowd.
She had just won a bronze medal by the thinnest margin, 15-14, on Monday night beneath the vaulted glass dome of the Grand Palais. It was her fifth career Olympic medal and the first of any color for Ukraine at the Paris Games, an emotional moment of celebration and defiance for a nation at war.
"It’s really special, incredible, like infinity special,” Kharlan told reporters, speaking in English, saying her medal was won for her country and its defenders and for the Ukrainian athletes "who couldn’t come here because they were killed by Russia.”