Oleksandra Kononova

Background

Kononova was born in Brovary in 1991.

Career

Her first trainer was Anatoliy Zadvineyev. When Kononova was nineteen she was chosen to travel from her home in Kyiv Oblast to represent her country at the paralympics in Canada. She was part of a Ukrainian team who had been fourth at the last paralympics and who hoped to better their position.

Kononova competed at the IPC Nordic Biathlon World Cup in Vuokatti in Finland in 2014.

On the final day of the World Cup she was the only non-Russian to claim a gold medal. She was in the Ukrainian biathlon team at the Sochi 2014 Paralympic Winter Games.

Achievements

• She won three medals at the 2010 Paralympics and became the 2010 Ukrainian sports personality of the year. Training on skates during the spring and summer seasons she found that her disability did not effect her ability to succeed at skiing and she was achieving national positions by the time she was eighteen. Kononova won a Gold medal for the Ukraine in the standing biathlon at the Paralympic games in Vancouver in 2010. She competed at the games as the reigning world champion. Kononova won the best debut at the games adding to the nineteen medals that the Ukraine took in Vancouver. She won three gold medals and a silver medal at the 2010 Paralympics and became the 2010 Ukrainian sports personality of the year. She won significant prize money from the Ukrainian government and was credited with assisting in changing the Ukrainian"s attitudes to disability in general.