Olha Kharlan
Olha (Olga) Hennadiyivna Kharlan (Ukrainian: Ольга Геннадіївна Харлан; born 4 September 1990) is a Ukrainian sabre fencer. She holds a bronze medal from both the 2016 Summer Olympics and the 2012 Summer Olympics and is twice World champion (2013 and 2014) and five-times European champion. She was Olympic team champion in the 2008 Summer Olympics, twice World team champion (2009 and 2013) and twice European team champion. Kharlan was named athlete of the year at the 2009 Ukrainian Heroes of Sports Years awards. She also pursues a political career.
Kharlan was born in Mykolaiv, a shipbuilding town in the south of Ukraine. Her father was a sailing and swimming coach, and taught her to swim when she was still a baby. He also moonlighted as a construction worker and a cab driver. Her mother worked as a painter and plasterer.
Kharlan first interest was in dancing, but the lessons were too expensive for her parents. When she was 10, her godfather, sabre coach Anatoly Shlikar, suggested she take up fencing, where the lessons were free. She came under the training of Artem Skorokhod, who remains her coach as of 2014. Her first success was the national Junior title, won when she was only 13 against teenagers up to five years older.
Kharlan was educated at the Admiral Makarov National University of Shipbuilding in Mykolaiv. She married fellow sabre fencer Dmytro Boiko in August 2014.
Kharlan joined the Ukrainian national team at the age of 14. Her first medal in an international competition was a bronze in the 2005 Junior World Championships in Linz after a defeat against Olympic champion Mariel Zagunis; she also took a silver medal in the team event. That same year, she reached the quarter-finals in the 2005 European Fencing Championships at Zalaegerszeg despite still being a cadet. In 2006, she placed second in the 2006 European Seniors Fencing Championship at İzmir after a close 14–15 defeat against Russia's Sofiya Velikaya.
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