“I COULD SEE THE
nUCLEAR POWER PLAnT
AnD THE SMOKE RISInG
ABOVE THE RUInS”
CHERnOBYL
FCO
n the morning of Saturday April 26, 1986, a helicopter
landed on a football pitch in northern Ukraine. Players from
FC Pripyat were preparing for a big cup semi-final against
FC Borodyanka later that afternoon. They watched as men
wearing protective suits and carrying radiation detectors
clambered out of the helicopter. As the detectors clicked
with audible warnings, the men informed the footballers
that the match would not be played. There had been an
incident at the nearby Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Nuclear Power
Plant, also known as Chernobyl.
Pripyat was a commuter town located a couple of miles from the
nuclear power plant and around 10 miles from the city of Chernobyl.
Founded in 1970, Pripyat was a modern and progressive “atom town”,
designed to represent the best of the Soviet Union – the now-defunct
state that encompassed 15 republics including Russia and Ukraine.
Pripyat had a cinema, swimming pool, amusement park and several
tower blocks that housed a population of around 50,000. It also had
a football team called FC Stroitel Pripyat.
‘Stroitel’ means builder. The team was formed by men working on
the construction of the Chernobyl plant and town of Pripyat, with the
support of Vasily Kizima, the director of construction. Sport played an