People often joke about sibling relationships, saying brothers and sisters are always arguing and competing for their parents’ attention. Oleksandr and Nadiia Radchenko know a lot about competition — but not with each other. Their rivalry plays out on the launch field at model rocketry competitions. This year, the brother and sister both made it into the TOP 10 of the Space Model World Cup in the rocket glider duration class with booster (S4A). Out of 176 athletes, Oleksandr took 1st place, while Nadiia finished 5th. Here’s a closer look at this remarkable sporting family.
Where It All Began
Twenty-two-year-old Oleksandr and fifteen-year-old Nadiia are from Nizhyn. Oleksandr says he loved making things with his hands from a very young age. One day, while attending a school camp, he visited an exhibition by the Young Technicians’ Station, where he met people who were building rocket models. He was still too young to officially join the club, but they let him launch a rocket model.
“That was my very first launch. That moment – ‘Key to start. Five, four, three, two, one. Launch.’ The model shot up, the engine burned through all the fuel. Then comes the moment when the recovery system is supposed to deploy… But something went wrong, and instead of two parachutes, only one opened. Still, that wasn’t a problem—the model is designed to descend safely even with just one parachute,” the champion recalls.
After that, Oleksandr spent a year doing space modeling, then tried other hobbies – football, judo, intellectual games, dancing. But eventually he realized that rockets were truly his thing. He returned to the sport and has never left it since.
“As a kid, I wasn’t particularly interested in what my brother was doing – some rockets and that was it. To be honest, what I liked most was when he went to competitions, because for a whole week the room was all mine,” Nadiia laughs.
Over time, though, everything changed. As Nadiia grew older, she became more curious about her brother’s passion. That curiosity eventually led her to the Young Technicians’ Station as well, where she discovered model rocketry for herself.
Oleksandr always supported his younger sister, and before long she began achieving results of her own – winning competitions and sharpening her skills. Her friends support her too; they’re always eager to hear new stories from tournaments.
“Sometimes I tell them how we were searching for models in a cornfield, other times how the rockets flew over the river and we had to keep looking on the other bank, where we even met a roe deer. And sometimes the models flew straight into the forest, and we had to fish them out with sticks,” the athlete shares.
Even though model rocketry is traditionally seen as a male-dominated sport, Nadiia says she has never felt any bias. For her, it’s all about opportunities and results, not stereotypes.
Season 2025: Challenges and Victories
During the 2025 competitive season, Oleksandr continued to refine his S4A-class models. He first chose this category back in 2020, but due to COVID and the full-scale invasion, the idea only began to take real shape in 2023.
“By making this category our main focus, we achieved these results because we put all our effort into optimizing the model – making it as light as possible, both in weight and in terms of preparation speed, while still matching the quality of other competitors’ models,” the rocketeer explains.
According to Oleksandr, this season was much tougher than previous ones. The team had become significantly smaller, and many organizational tasks fell directly on the athletes themselves. Even small bits of routine that distract from core training can affect the final result, which makes the success of the Ukrainian team even more valuable.
Nadiia, meanwhile, recalls some funny moments from competitions. The most memorable one happened at the final World Cup stage in Slovenia, in the S4 class.
“In the first round, both of our models flew into a cornfield. In the second, they overshot not only the cornfield but also an apple orchard and ended up across the river, where it was impossible to find them. Before the third round, there was no choice – we went back to search for the first-round models in the cornfield, which was about twice as tall as me and where you could easily get lost. We roughly knew where the rockets might be, but among identical rows of corn you completely lose your sense of direction. Time is running out, the tension keeps rising. And when there were only about 15 minutes left in the round, my teammate found my rocket. It was like getting a second wind – I ran to the launch area with it, we quickly prepared the model, and literally in the last seconds managed to launch it, achieving the maximum result,” Nadiia says.
Of course, behind the funny stories and winners’ medals lies an enormous amount of work under extremely difficult conditions – the inability to conduct launches in Ukraine due to martial law, and the determination to keep going no matter what. These athletes demonstrate incredible resilience and perseverance, and their global recognition is a natural result of that. We wish Oleksandr and Nadiia many more victories – and only peaceful rockets in the Ukrainian sky.
