Yaroslava Mahuchikh in high jump action at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games (© Dan Vernon)
When Yaroslava Mahuchikh emerges for her season opener at the UdinJump meeting at Udine in the north-east corner of Italy on Thursday (6) she will embark on another four-year Olympic cycle, with a full set of major championship titles already in her possession at the tender age of 23.
The young Ukrainian queen of the high jump was still 22 when she climbed out of her in-field sleeping bag to add Olympic gold to her collection in the cauldron of Stade de France on 4 August last year.
In smoothly snapping her 1.82m frame over 2.00m at the first attempt, Mahuchikh beat Australia’s Nicola Olyslagers on countback and completed a ‘grand slam’ of major titles: Olympic, world outdoor and indoor plus European outdoor and indoor.
The Ukraine singlet and shorts that she wore that day, plus her name bib, have been kindly donated to the World Athletics Heritage Collection and can be seen on display in the online 3D platform of the Museum of World Athletics (MOWA) as visual evidence of a truly major accomplishment in track and field history.
Yaroslava Mahuchikh and World Athletics President Sebastian Coe (© World Athletics)
Mahuchikh, who was proclaimed World Athletics women’s field event athlete of the year in Monaco in December, is only the third female high jumper to claim all five of the major gold medals she has gained.
Stefka Kostadinova was the first. The Bulgarian started her quest with world indoor (Games) gold as a 19-year-old in 1985, but was 31 by the time she managed to complete her set with Olympic success in Atlanta in 1996.
Mariya Lasitskene won the world indoor title at 21 in Sopot in 2014 but the Russian was 28 when she added the missing chunk of Olympic gold in Tokyo in 2021.
Thus, in applying her clinching Midas touch as a 22-year-old in Paris, Mahuchikh became the youngest grand slamming high jump golden girl in the annals of track and field - by the considerable margin of six years.
The bronze medallist as a 19-year-old in Tokyo in 2021, behind Lasitskene and Olyslagers, the Ukrainian showed her maturity, class and composure in the heat of Olympic battle in Paris, registering first-time clearances all the way up to and including 2.00m.
Olyslagers kept herself in contention with a third-time success at 2.00m but both she and Mahuchikh could venture no higher. The Australian had to settle for a second consecutive Olympic silver medal.
With Olyslagers’ teammate Eleanor Patterson and Mahuchikh’s compatriot Iryna Gerashchenko tying for bronze with 1.95m clearances, it was a heart-warming medal double for Ukraine in the midst of the on-going conflict with Russia.
“It’s really important for our people, our defenders,” said Mahuchikh, who has managed to navigate a path to the pinnacle of her profession since the invasion of her homeland three years ago.
Now based in Estonia with her long-time coach Tetyana Stepanova, she has time on her side to complete another set of major titles. Possibly more.
By the next Olympics, in Los Angeles in 2028, Mahuchikh will only be 26. And she has three major titles to aim for in 2025 alone, with the European Indoor Championships in Apeldoorn from 6 to 9 March before the World Athletics Indoor Championships Nanjing 25 from 21 to 23 March and then the World Athletics Championships Tokyo 25 from 13 to 21 September.
Seven out of seven
She goes into the LA Olympic cycle with the momentum of an outdoor season in which she won seven out of seven competitions and became the first female high jumper to clear 2.10m, eclipsing Kostadinova’s 2.09m world record from the 1987 World Championships with a momentous barrier-breaking performance at the Paris Diamond League in Stade Charlety on 7 July.
Yaroslava Mahuchikh in the high jump in Paris (© Christel Saneh for World Athletics)
Further cementing her place in posterity, Mahuchikh also became the first woman in her event for 48 years to achieve the double of winning Olympic gold and setting a world record in the same season. Before that, the feat was achieved by East Germany’s Rosi Ackerman in 1976.
This time last year Mahuchikh’s PB was 2.06m. The 4cm improvement came courtesy of a speedier approach, accelerated by the addition of two extra steps to her run up - after an indoor season in which she lost her world indoor title to Olyslagers in Glasgow, a silver medal performance that remains her most recent defeat.
It would be too much to expect a similar hike in 2025, although Mahuchikh herself has not ruled out the prospect of a step up to 2.11m or 2.12m.
“Of course I want to improve myself,” she said. “Of course I want to set a new record. I’m working for that. With the change in my technique in the summer season, I got good results. I felt like the queen of jumps.
“I want to improve myself and reward the people who come to watch. I don’t think about any pressure.”
Mahuchikh has always been adept at handling the pressure cooker of major competitions.
Calm demeanour
As a teenage prodigy, the girl from Dnipro never failed to land anything other than gold, winning world U18 and European Youth Olympics titles in 2017; claiming the European U18 and Youth Olympics crowns in 2018, and taking European U20 gold in 2019. She also won the European U23 title as a 20-year-old in 2021.
Yaroslava Mahuchikh at the 2017 World U18 Championships in Nairobi (© Getty Images)
In the senior arena, Mahuchikh has earned medals in all 11 of the major championships she has contested: world outdoor silver in 2019, European indoor gold and Olympic bronze in 2021; world indoor and European outdoor gold plus world outdoor silver in 2022; world outdoor and European indoor gold in 2023; and Olympic and European outdoor gold plus world indoor silver in 2024.
In a vertical jumps discipline, where psychology can play such a vital role, that remarkable record further underlines what an exceptional individual the smiling Ukrainian with the radiant personality and the calm demeanour just happens to be.
In the torrential rain at the start of the Weltklasse Diamond League meeting in Zurich last September, Mahuchikh looked bedraggled and beaten – and not unlike a hiker trapped on a nightmare camping trip, as she huddled next to a hoarding under an umbrella in her trademark sleeping bag for the best part of an hour.
She fluffed her first two shots at 1.93m but then, suddenly, the queen of the women’s high jump snapped into her regal groove, succeeding with a last chance saloon effort and then sailing over 1.96m to snatch victory from the seemingly nailed-on Olyslagers.
Simon Turnbull for World Athletics Heritage
