Mahuchikh strikes gold for Ukraine after fleeing Russian invasion

Yaroslava Mahuchikh overcame the “total panic” of armed conflict in her native Ukraine to win gold in the high jump at the World Indoor Championships on Saturday. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Mahuchikh was forced to flee her home, hide out in a cellar and eventually make the 2,000km trip over three days to Belgrade […]

Yaroslava Mahuchikh overcame the “total panic” of armed conflict in her native Ukraine to win gold in the high jump at the World Indoor Championships on Saturday.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Mahuchikh was forced to flee her home, hide out in a cellar and eventually make the 2,000km trip over three days to Belgrade to face what she dubbed her own front line.

The reigning European indoor high jump champion, who won Olympic bronze in Tokyo last summer and world outdoor silver in Doha in 2019, left her home in Dnipro just three weeks ago as the conflict escalated.

Training, needless to say, was low on her list of priorities.

But she did succeed in finding her way to Serbia after “hundreds of phone calls, many changes of direction, explosions, fires, and air raid sirens”.

“This medal is for Ukraine, all my country, all my people, all the military,” said Mahuchikh. “I must protect my country on the track in an international arena.

“Before we went to the field, the only thought in my mind was about Ukraine because too many terrible things have happened there.

“They killed our people and they killed our nation and they killed our children, the future of Ukraine,” she said of Russian military actions.

“I don’t know what they want because we enjoy our life in Ukraine. I think a lot of people in Russia must understand that this war in Ukraine is true. I know that a lot of Russian people said that it’s all fake, the videos are all fake, but a lot of our cities have been destroyed, how was that fake?”