I put my gold medal in my father’s coffin and said goodbye
USYK’S FAREWELL TO DAD WHO SAW HIS SUCCESS
After walking up to the coffin, Olympic champion Oleksandr Usyk pressed his gold medal into his dead father’s hand. It was a final gesture for the man he idolised and who lived just long enough to see his son stand on the podium and say a last farewell.
“He watched me become Olympic champion, but I didn’t make it back in time to show him the gold medal,” Oleksandr says. “When I arrived he was already lying in the coffin.
“I handed him the medal, put it in his dead hand and then left the room.”
His father, also called Oleksandr, had been too ill to travel to the London 2012 Games but the pair shared an emotional last phone call following his heavyweight win. For the first time in his life, he told his son he loved him.
“When I won and got back to my hotel room, he called me. We talked on the phone for an hour, we’d never spent an hour on the phone together before,” a tearful Oleksandr recalls. “It was as if he was saying his farewell to me.”
His absence will be felt again on Saturday night as 37-year-old Oleksandr stands in the way of Tyson Fury’s dream of becoming the first undisputed heavyweight world champion for 25 years.
And it was the boxer’s decision to wait for a new car which robbed him of the chance to see his father a final time.
“I was on my way back from London,” says Oleksandr, who was brought up in Ukraine by his soldier-turned-securityguard father and his mother, Nadiia, who worked in construction.
“I was already in Ukraine, three more days and I would have been home but I was waiting for a supercar to arrive.
“I wanted to bring it with me and show him what a cool car I had, then my mum called to tell me the news.”
He is a man driven by loss and heartache – something few would guess from his gap-toothed smile and playful personality. To millions of boxing fans he is the folk-dancing juggler who is not afraid to burst into a spontaneous rap.
He sold ice-cream as a teenager to support his family, reads The Art of War in his spare time and didn’t hesitate to grab a machinegun and go to the frontline when Russia invaded his home country.
The father of four, who can hold his breath underwater for almost five minutes, took up boxing as an escape from the dangerous streets of Crimea, the region of Ukraine annexed by Russia in 2014.
While his dad’s military background instilled in him an iron discipline, selfproclaimed “crazy” Oleksandr has developed his own brand of motivation.
He incorporates Hopak, a Cossack folk dance, and CrossFit into his training and kills time during
We’d never talked so long.. it was as if he was saying his farewell
OLEKSANDR USYK ON FINAL CALL TO HIS DAD
pre-fight press conferences by completing complex maths puzzles.
He has emerged as one of the most colourful and compelling characters in a sport not short of mavericks. He has already conquered the cruiserweight division as a professional and is the reigning WBA, WBO and IBF heavyweight champion after two stunning victories over Anthony Joshua. But if he beats Fury, 35, in Saudi bia this weekend and adds the WBC t to his tally, his legacy as one of the time greats will be secured.
His road to this moment has been long and difficult. He had a brush with death as a teenager when he spent a year in and out of hospital with pneumonia. At one point doctors told his family to prepare for the worst.
Oleksandr recovered and picked up a job on a farm looking after cattle. He dreamed of becoming a footballer but his parents couldn’t afford the fees.
Instead, after watching boxing greats Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis on TV, he picked up a pair of gloves and embarked on a journey which has brought him to the baking heat of the desert and his date with destiny.
In between, however, he found himself drawn into a very different kind of fight. Just a few months after he defeated Joshua in their first meeting in 2021 to become heavyweight champion, Russia invaded his homeland. Oleksandr travelled to Ukraine to join its Territorial
Defence Forces, a group of combat veterans and civilian volunteers. Holed up in a
Kiev basement, he was separated from his wife Yekaterina, who holds a Russian passport, and their children as the war raged around him.
“Through binoculars, from 900 metres, I saw my enemies running, exploding tanks and broken houses,” he says. “I saw people with no legs and arms. I saw people walking but looking like they were dead.
“When I was going in the car around the city, I realised it was a dead city. I saw children’s toys and playgrounds but everything looked dead, there was no energy. I realised that one day that place, on that ground, kids were playing. But now it is dead.” Oleksandr was convinced to leave the warzone a month into the conflict and return to training for his second successful fight with Joshua. Ukraine remains under siege two years on and the fighter is still forced to spend months away from his wife and their four children Yelizaveta, Kyrylo, Mykhalio and baby Maria
But he has been accompanied to Saudi Arabia by his daughter’s favourite cuddly toy – an Eeyore mascot he first showed off before his rematch with Joshua two years ago. He missed the birth of his youngest daughter Maria in January as he was preparing to face Fury at a training camp in Spain. The fight was postponed after the Gypsy King was cut in sparring.
“I sacrificed all the dates we used to spend with my family,” he says. “Christmas, my birthday, my sons’ birthdays and the birth of my daughter.”
And while Fury plans to give his four shiny belts to his Saudi paymasters if he wins on Saturday, Oleksandr has earmarked one for each of his children.
Regardless of the result, the men will reunite in the Middle East in just five months for a money-spinning rematch.
The sacrifices will continue – but the joker in the pack will keep on smiling.