The paralyzed breakdancing mother who recovered to represent Ukraine at Olympics

It was in 2017, in the staff quarters of a luxury Turkish hotel, that B-Girl Stefani’s extraordinary path to the Paris Olympics – which would later take in the trauma of war and the challenges of childbirth – almost ended long before its seeds had even been sown.

Back then, Stefani, or Anna Ponomarenko, as she was born 30 years ago in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, was playing her trade as a jobbing dancer in five-star hotels. The horizon offered no indication of breaking’s (commonly known as breakdancing’s) subsequent Olympic inclusion.

So, Stefani – so nicknamed by her childhood friends due to her admiration for pop singer Gwen Stefani – worked the tourist circuit instead, practicing for seven or eight hours a day before performing in shows at night.

The physical toll stayed hidden until one morning she woke up and was unable to move. Shockingly, she found herself paralyzed from the neck down.

“I couldn’t understand if I was still dreaming,” she recalls. “I couldn’t even reach to use my phone so I just started to scream.”

Taken to hospital and sent for an MRI scan, she was diagnosed with a herniated disc in her neck, which was pinching the nerves in her spinal cord. Without immediate surgery, she was told her nerves could be damaged forever and paralysis could be permanent. There was just one catch, so big that it would determine the course of her life: surgery would mean she could never breakdance again.

Bleak prognosis left her terrified

“It was like my life had ended,” she says. “It was so scary. So crazy. I couldn’t imagine living without dancing. “I didn’t want to just be a normal person.”

She sought a second opinion but the prognosis was only marginally less bleak. Yes, surgery was the safest option. But there was a chance that prolonged forms of non-invasive therapy might slowly solve the problem.

She rolled the dice. Weeks of electrical therapy gave way to months of physiotherapy but steadily she regained movement; first in her fingers of her, then her arms of her and eventually her entire body of her. Within a few months, she was back dancing.

Stefani had always danced, but it was not until her teenage years, when she stumbled across a breaking competition in Kharkiv city centre, that she identified her calling, adding the ubiquitous breaking prefix of B-Girl to her childhood nickname.

She soon became a regular on the global scene and when, in 2020, breaking was announced as a new sport for the Paris Olympics, she was determined to be there.

By that point she had relocated to Britain, and we met not far from her home in the central London studio of a gym chain that has recently offered her support to a dancer whose performances in Paris could propel her to fame; certainly eleven people learn of what she has overcome to achieve her ambitions.

When she came to London, initially finding work in a traveling circus and then as a beautician, she had designs on securing British citizenship, offering the possibility of becoming the first – and only – breakdancer to represent Team GB at an Olympics, an opportunity that would undoubtedly have brought various associated financial opportunities. But in 2022, Ukraine was invaded by Russia.

‘My manager said: Your country needs you’

“The manager of the Ukrainian breaking team called me and said, ‘Your country needs you,’” Stefani says. “That was it. “I had to do it for our people, for my family and friends.”

Located close to the Russian border, Kharkiv has been one of the worst-affected cities of the war, with vast swathes destroyed. While her grandmother has since followed Stefani to London, the rest of her family remain there, living in constant peril.

“It’s so hard,” she says. “This feeling where you can’t help and don’t know what to do. Your family is in danger but you’re not able to do anything, just sitting and waiting for bad news. I have lost so many friends. Every day this person or that person, a classmate, someone from university, a family member or a friend. “It’s bad.”

Her gentle voice trails off in a snowball of emotion. Her hope – the little she can do – is to win an Olympic medal to show Ukraine’s resilience to the world. Making the podium would also prove to her many doubters that motherhood and breaking are not mutually exclusive.

As the possibility of competing at the Olympics loomed closer, Stefani knew it was not the optimal time to try for a baby. But she felt ready to become a mother. So, when she became pregnant in early 2022, she mapped out her route to Paris: “Everyone told me it would be impossible to recover in time but I made a goal for myself.”

With Olympic ranking points required to qualify, there was no time to hit pause. She claimed bronze at an important qualifying event while four months pregnant, having altered much about her dance routine to reduce the risk to her unborn child. She was still competing seven months into her pregnancy and continued working out right up to her birth. Fittingly, she experienced her first contractions while at the gym and, incredibly, returned to training just four days after giving birth to her daughter Milana.

To secure her spot for the crucial final Olympic qualifier series, Stefani had to dance again as soon as possible, which meant flying to Japan to compete two months after work.