She has spent more than seven decades living with horses: what Victoria Marushchak does today
Victoria Marushchak, a horse trainer, has been working with horses for over 70 years. She is originally from Khabarovsk; after finishing school, she studied in Kharkiv and later worked at various horse breeding farms in Ukraine.
Today, Viktoria Marushchak no longer rides, but she continues to pursue her passion. She teaches horse care to children in the Rivne region and serves as a judge at equestrian competitions.
“My grandparents lived in the village of Velyki Sorochyntsi in the Poltava region, right next to the Dibrivka Horse Farm, and I used to walk 25 kilometers to that horse farm. Well, how did I ‘run’? I walked. My grandfather was a doctor; he had a couple of riding horses that I took care of, and there were also horses at the Gogol collective farm—I was practically never out of that stable,” she said.
The woman was born in Khabarovsk, Russia; after graduating from high school, she enrolled in the Kharkiv Zooveterinary Academy. She then worked in Ukraine.
“I worked as a head groom at the Dibrivka Horse Breeding Farm, where I raised the famous Pion; then I was transferred to the Kyiv Racetrack, where I also worked for a very long time, and from the Kyiv Racetrack I was reassigned to the Kyiv region. And then I was transferred here, where a group of horse breeders was organized at the technical school—and a racetrack was built for their training,” recalled Viktoria Marushchak.
She was supposed to be transferred to another horse farm, but she decided to stay here:
“I worked with trotters and racehorses; I rode and participated in equestrian sports. And here I taught the children everything: there were four-in-hand teams here, there were trotters, and there were racehorses, because the children came here to study from different horse farms and different regions.”
Now she no longer rides horses; instead, she teaches children at an equestrian club, serves as a judge at equestrian competitions, and cares for the animals.
“The horse is my favorite animal, you know? And when I work with them, I always spoil the horses—maybe that’s not a good thing. I spoiled one so much recently that he might have even bitten me,” the horsewoman shared.
The equestrian club has 20 horses, which are cared for by two grooms and volunteers, says director Kateryna Trokhimenko.
“We specialize in various areas: sports, recreational riding, and health programs for children and veterans. We offer a veterans’ sports program, which means the government allocates 1,500 per veteran every quarter to fund sports clubs,” she explained.
This is reported in a story by Suspilne.
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