Ukraine’s Jaroslava Mahuchich on Sunday dedicated her Olympic high jump gold medal to the nearly 500 athletes and coaches who have been killed since Russia invaded her country in 2022.
The 22-year-old lived up to her billing ahead of the Paris Games, claiming the title at the Stade de France.
She wanted to win more to please her compatriots in her war-torn country than to break her own world record.
The world champion, a bronze medalist in Tokyo three years ago, managed a best of 2.00m to win on countback from Australia’s Nicola Olyslagers.
Another Australian, Eleanor Patterson, won joint bronze with another Ukrainian, Iryna Gerashchenko, both at 1.95m.
Mahuchikh said her thoughts were with the many athletes and coaches who had lost their lives in the conflict – they, she said, would never have been able to experience an evening like hers in Paris.
“Obviously you know, it’s really important,” she said of the gold medal.
“But in my country the Russians killed people and almost 500 athletes died in this war and they will never compete and celebrate and feel this atmosphere.”
“So I’m happy with the gold medal and it’s really for all of them. It’s really incredible that we now have three medals in athletics.”
Mahuchikh draped herself in a Ukrainian flag and hugged Gerashchenko with a duet, shortly after doing a celebratory jump up and down with the two Australians on the landing pad.
Mahuchikh – whose mind is constantly on the well-being of her family in the Dnieper, which she says is under daily shelling – nearly fell as a result, but it was the only time she misstepped during the evening.
Mahuchikh then walked over and pulled the bell in the corner of the stadium, and she and Gerashchenko also celebrated with compatriot Myhaylo Kohkan, who had just won bronze in the men’s hammer.
The trio’s achievements earned praise from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“We are very proud!” he said. “Thank you for this result. Ukrainians know how to be strong and how to win.”
The 29-year-old Gerashchenko added an Olympic bronze to the European bronze she won this year and summed up the feelings of the trio.
“It’s amazing that this is our night for the Ukrainian people and team.”
With her signature blue-and-yellow eyeliner – the colors of the Ukrainian flag – Mahuchikh came nowhere near her world record of 2.10m at the Paris Diamond League last month.
This mark beat the previous record of Bulgaria’s Stefka Kostadinova in 1987 by 1 cm, one of the longest track and field records.
But her performance in Paris on Sunday was enough for the Olympic gold, the only trophy missing from the impressive medal campaign of the high lifter.
“There was a lot of pressure out there before these Olympics, but I try not to think about it because I feel good on the track,” she said.
“I was just enjoying the atmosphere. I wanted to win the gold, thank God my childhood coach told me that you should jump all the heights on your first attempts.”
Mahuchikh, who fled the Russian bombing of her hometown of Dnipro in February 2022, claimed world gold in Budapest last year after taking silver in Eugene, and achieved the same result in Doha in 2019.
Because of the war, the Ukrainian had to make a six-day journey by car to Belgrade in 2022, where she added the world indoor title in the high jump to the two world silvers and the Olympic bronze she had already collected.
This season, Mahuchikh also won world indoor silver in Glasgow in March.
Aside from her amazing jumping, another thing that caught the eye was that she got into a sleeping bag between jumps. “I just relax in it because I feel comfortable lying down and sometimes I can count numbers, look at the clouds,” she said.
