In late February, Yaroslava Mahuchikh woke up to the sound of explosions and gunfire. Her hometown of Dnipro, Ukraine is just 300 miles from Ukraine’s capital and most populous city, Kyiv, which has become the site of the most territorial contention during the Russian invasion. Dnipro is even closer to the Russian border.
Although Dnipro has always been geographically vulnerable to Russian invasion (the city is surrounded by other cities that have been invaded and occupied for weeks), it wasn’t until last week (Friday, March 11) that Dnipro was attacked. Russia launched three airstrikes on Dnipro, one near a preschool and another directly into a shoe factory. Only one person died, in part because so few Ukranians remain in the city. Most have evacuated.
Mahuchikh, the 20-year-old high jumper, was among the evacuees and actually left much sooner than most of her neighbors. She fled to the eastern Ukrainian countryside about a month ago. She always knew the World Championships in Belgrade were scheduled for the end of March and that she had qualified, and she planned to compete. She didn’t stay in the countryside long. She continued east to Belgrade. It took her three days by car to arrive.
“I want to show Ukrainian people are strong people. They never give up,” Mahuchikh told World Athletics in Serbia. “Our military protects our country at home and today I protect my country on the track.”
Athletics competition may feel like war to some, but only war is war, and the high jump pit is the site of relatively trivial matters. Mahuchikh makes her height at 1.88 meters on her first attempt, and her home country is still being invaded. She misses twice and makes the height at 2 meters on her third attempt, and her home country is still being invaded. She’s here, she’s not here, her head in it, her head elsewhere.
But Mahuchikh just kept jumping. Just kept making bars.
Uncertain about her own responsibility in the grand scheme of things, Mahuchikh referred to the high jump competition in Belgrade as her own “front line,” feeling that the world would be watching her, understanding that her personal duty in the name of her country was to perform. Everybody has a role, and hers is to jump.
Mahuchikh made her height at 2.02 meters (6’-7.5”), and the only other woman remaining was Eleanor Patterson of Australia. Patterson missed. And missed again. Missed a third time and it was all over.
Mahuchikh was crowned the World Champion. She was given a bouquet of flowers and the Ukrainian flag. She raised the flag up above her head, both arms extended, and jogged a victory lap.
“To jump here was so difficult psychologically because my heart remains in my country,” Mahuchikh said.
The spirit of the international athletic competition—the World Championships, the Olympics—is that it unites the world, that it’s transcendent of politics, that it’s a reprieve from geopolitical dispute, whatever else. Of course all of that’s a myth.
Mahuchikh carried with her a set of additional challenges. Her psychological distress isn’t unlike arriving to jump with a bad ankle or a mild illness. In elite athletics, focus is everything, and she said her mind was in Dnipro, in Ukraine. Perhaps the elevated sense of purpose enhanced her performance. This weekend, probably more than ever before, she represented her country. Everybody’s paying attention to the Ukrainian athletes. Everybody wants to know what they have to say, what they’ve been through.
Patterson, the runner-up in the event from Australia, painted her nails blue with yellow hearts in support of Ukraine, “just to communicate a small gesture to them that my heart goes out to them,” Patterson said.
This is not Mahuchikh’s first strong performance at a major championship. She came second in Doha in 2019, and she earned a bronze medal at the Tokyo Olympics last summer.
The reigning Olympic champion in the high jump, Mariya Lasitskene, was barred from competing in Belgrade. All Russians were. (So were Belarussians.) It’s questionable whether banning Russia’s athletes from competition for their government’s actions is a reasonable intervention. They’re ordinary people. Some are political dissenters. The precedent is potentially dangerous. Other wealthy countries commit egregious crimes on a global stage all the time and face no consequence. Etc. Regardless, athletes from the Russian Olympic Committee were not in Belgrade, and that’s part of the reason why Mahuchikh could earn gold.
Ukraine brought six athletes to Belgrade. They were all women. For comparison, they brought 40 athletes to the World Championships in 2019 in Doha. Their ongoing invasion certainly has something to do with their limited roster size.
Mahuchikh was not the only Ukrainian athlete to compete well. Maryna Bekh-Romanchuk earned a silver medal in the triple jump with a distance of 14.74 meters (48’-4”). The next day she placed sixth in the high jump.
Yana Hladiychuk placed fourth in the pole vault with a performance of 4.60 meters (15’-1”). During the meet, Hladiychuk wrote “Stop War” on her cheek.
On her Instagram, Hladiychuk posted a photo from her competition with a long caption: “We cannot forget about this tragedy even for an hour of competition, because it is incomparably more important. The world cannot be silent. The world cannot be deaf.”
The World Championships are over. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not.
