Athletes in general are not very sentimental people. Their well-trained long-term neglect of their own pain and fatigue also deforms their attitude towards other people's feelings. They can appreciate the final breakthrough or an unprecedented overcoming, but rather as researchers of the phenomenon of achievement. Dispassionately. It is unlikely that they will pass through themselves and be moved to tears.
But on August 22, 2023, at the ice arena in Sochi, during the premiere of Ilya Averbukh's show «Letters of Love», great athletes — Olympic champions and world champions — were crying backstage without hiding their emotions. Wept, for example, Tatiana Totmyanina — the most iron lady among all the fragile elves. Accustomed to going out on the ice with a damaged meniscus and climbing into high supports after a terrible head fall, she herself never considered it all to be anything special.
The thing is that in front of the artists of the show and the audience, Roman Kostomarov went on the ice. For the first time since fighting death, he spent months in intensive care and underwent several amputations, and then endured endless days of recovery and prosthetics. Accompanied by his wife Oksana Domnina. She is wearing skates and a black dress. He is in white sneakers that hide the prostheses. Both seemed to have become a lifetime older.
When Roman fell ill and ended up in the hospital, we, who had only recently seen him young and healthy on the recording of the Ice Age show, said: yes, this is some kind of nonsense. Probably covid. He'll get better soon.
Then the denial only intensified. At first we denied bad forecasts. When bad forecasts began to come true one after another, the reality was already denied. Because there is no reality where a 45-year-old healthy man can die from the fact that his powerful hardened body turned out to be weaker than some kind of disease. But the reports from Kommunarka, where Kostomarov was lying, for the first months shattered the mirror of the present blow by blow.
If it was so hard for us to accept it, it's hard to imagine the degree of denial in which Roman's family existed all this time. Unlike us, ordinary eyewitnesses, they were forced to participate in everything from the inside. Even when I wanted to run wherever my eyes looked, hoping to wake up from a terrible dream.
The fact that Roman survived seems to be taken for granted. The only conceivable scenario. Only doctors and someone Almighty, if he exists, can know what is more in this — the professionalism of doctors, good luck, perseverance of Roman and his relatives.
The strength of the spirit may have played a decisive role. He had not yet been discharged from the hospital, as he had already begun to set records on simulators. They put prostheses — he began to learn to walk and even run.
Now there is little doubt that one day Kostomarov will be able to put on skates — just too little time has passed so far. How can one not recall the pilot Alexei Maresyev from The Tale of a Real Man. He, having lost his feet due to a severe wound, did not lose the will to live and love for the sky. And returned to aviation.
As then, more than 70 years ago, this story has significance for the whole world. In the place of Roman Kostomarov, as a person who found himself in a critical life situation, in fact, any of us could be. In hindsight, one can argue that the reason for his misfortune is the repeated exits to the ice in a cold state. Ignoring your health in favor of work and obligations. From the height of omniscience, one can say: nothing like this would ever happen to us, of course. We are smart, we know.
But this is not so. Firstly, because everyday heroism is a fairly common thing among the most ordinary people with a developed sense of responsibility, and not just champions. How many of us are daredevils who go to work with a fever, because you can’t let down your colleagues and boss. How many sick students are at the exam, because this is the last chance.
Secondly, because our life and health is something that we can control to a rather weak degree now. It will not work to resist an unfortunate set of circumstances — it happens by itself, against our will. The only thing we can do is not to give up even when the whole world is ready to bury you.
Every person has a chance to live, even if you think that there is no chance. You just need to know why to live. Roman Kostomarov seems to have found out.