2 Hryvni Winter Olympics Salt Lake City, 2002

Ukraine issued this coin in 2001, a full year before the Salt Lake City Games opened — standard practice for Olympic commemoratives intended to reach collectors while anticipation is still high. It was the country's tenth year of issuing hryvnia coinage following independence, and the National Bank had by then developed a dependable secondary revenue stream through commemorative programs targeting the domestic collector market. Salt Lake City 2002 was the first Winter Olympics following the 2002 doping scandal investigations that ultimately implicated several post-Soviet delegations, though Ukraine itself escaped serious sanction.