Team Ukraine have hit the ground running at the Winter Paralympics, standing second in the medal table after three days of competition. Their resolve and determination has been inspirational to many, but one athlete has revealed a secret weapon in their search for a competitive edge.

Maksym Murashkovskyi, who won ­silver in the men’s visually impaired biathlon on Sunday and did not miss a shot, has been ­working with ­OpenAI’s large language model. “For the past six months, I have been training with ChatGPT,” he said. “It was not only ­tactics. It was half of my ­training plan, ­motivation, etc. So it was a huge ­volume of all of my training. I used it as a psychologist, coach and, sometimes, as a doctor.”

Murashkovskyi was remarkably composed after coming second so comfortably in only his second Paralympic race. “I know it sounds strange, but I have been preparing for this race for many years,” he said.

The 25-year-old argued that AI allowed him to train in new ways. “I believe in it, it is a revolutionary technology,” he said, adding that it had replaced what he called ­“classical” training “as I’ve always done, with humans”.

AI has been deployed in the conflict in Ukraine, used to find ­targets and analyse satellite footage. “Unfortunately, you see it in the military sphere and in bad spheres,” he said. “But it’s like with ­chemistry or ­biology, someone can use it for something good, someone can use it for something bad. I use it for ­learning, for languages, for some of my projects, in chemistry, biology and sports.”

Ukraine have won 10 ­medals at the Paralympic Games and ­Murashkovskyi will compete again in the visually impaired cross-­country skiing on Tuesday . Two of ­Russia’s six invited athletes are also in action at the Tesero cross-country arena, but in different classifications.