When he was a young schoolboy, Sergei Evglevski was permitted to take his mother’s Sydney 2000 Olympic Games women’s 25m Pistol bronze medal and her 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games gold medals to school for a special classroom “show and tell”.
Evglevski’s mother, Lalita Yauhleuskaya, was a giant of international Pistol Shooting world attending five Olympic Games – two for her native Belarus and three for her adopted Australia – the last being the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.
Tomorrow, the family’s Olympic dynasty continues when Evglevski commences his own Games journey when he competes in the first stage of the men’s 25m Rapid Fire Pistol.
Along with his father, Sergei Evglevski Snr, who was the Australian Olympic team gunsmith at the 2000 and 2004 Games, what the family doesn’t know about Shooting can be found on the back of a postage stamp.
Young Sergei’s international Shooting career began in 2015 when he competed in the Junior World Cup in Germany and a year later, he earned Junior World Cup silver and bronze medals in Germany and Azerbaijan.
Then in a rare honour in any field of sport, he and his mother were Australian team-mates at the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games.
It was the last of Lalita’s five Commonwealth Games appearances for Australia and Sergei’s first. He won a silver medal in the 25m Rapid Fire Pistol while she was unplaced in the 25m Sports Pistol final.
Lalita was bursting with pride as Sergei claimed a podium finish. On that day, Sergei was much more than just a team-mate. He was flesh and blood.
With the family’s Olympic handover is now complete, Evglevski’s parents will nervously watch on from their Melbourne home riding every pull of the trigger and every shot their son makes.
“They know I am mature enough to do my own thing, don’t lose focus and to keep going forward,” he said.
A medal in Tokyo is not Evglevski’s primary focus.
“The goal I’ve set for myself is to prove to people and the whole shooting world, not just to be Lalita’s son but being my own shooter,” he said.
