Ukraine’s Vladyslav Hryko has announced on his Instagram that he had knee surgery due to a recent injury. The surgery was to repair the torn ACL and lateral meniscus in his knee. Hryko wrote:
“Good morning, my friends, I had surgery yesterday. Everything’s well! I’ll tell it how it is right away. I tore the ACL and lateral meniscus in my knee. What’s left now is to recover and get back into it again! Thanks everyone for your support”.
Hryko has been an integral part of the Ukrainian men’s team in the past few years and was on the team that won gold at the recent European Championships. While he isn’t the biggest star of the team, he provides solid scores on multiple events, which was especially important in the absence of Oleg Verniaiev at the 2020 Euros. It is not very likely he will be able to recover by the Olympics this summer and it is another blow to the Ukrainian team, following the ongoing suspension of Oleg Verniaiev.
It was, of course, a long shot for Hryko to make the Games, especially if Ukraine doesn’t qualify any extra spots. On a four-person team, three spots would definitely go to Oleg Verniaiev, Petro Pakhniuk, and Igor Radivilov and there would be a battle for the fourth spot, with Nazar Chepurnyi, Illia Kovtun, and Volodymyr Kostiuk being most likely candidates for it. Kovtun and Kostiuk are the gold and silver all-around medalists from the last junior Euros and both turned senior this year. Neither is yet at the level of Verniaiev or Pakhniuk but both can offer 14+ scores on a number of events and have some upgrades in store and Kostiuk’s performance at Euros was hindered by a shoulder injury. However, Ukrainian men’s team still doesn’t have a lot of depth and even the addition of new seniors might not be enough. At the Euros, the team without Verniaiev and Chepurnyi (recovering from a back injury) placed second in the qualification, behind Turkey, the team that has not qualified to the Olympics.
