World Athletics acknowledged Yaroslava Mahuchikh’s record-breaking season by naming her Women’s Field Athlete of the Year on December 1, 2024. Yet Mahuchikh’s prevailing wish is for peace in her war-torn country of Ukraine. The 23-year-old high jumper enjoyed a fabulous year competing for Ukraine in hopes of providing some positivity for her compatriots. She lit up the city of Paris on two occasions, won the European Championship, the Diamond League final and in late October was recognized as Europe’s Best Women’s Athlete of 2024.
Last July, Mahuchikh broke the women’s world record, which had stood for 37 years, with her jump of 2.10 meters at Charlety Stadium, and then was crowned Olympic champion several weeks later at the Paris Games.
“Paris will be in my heart all my life,” she said in a late November interview with AFP.
Her winning jumps furnished her with some well-deserved joy before she returned home to Dnipro, Ukraine after the season, where she witnessed the massive devastation caused by Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked full-scale invasion that began in February 2022.
Seeing countless destroyed and damaged buildings brought her to tears. She spoke about missiles hitting a building only 200 meters from her house in mid-November. Despite the strength and resilience shown by the Ukrainian people, Mahuchikh prays and hopes for an ending to the war and a victory for Ukraine.
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She had to consider all of the risks involved in her returning home to Dnipro, but it was of paramount importance to her to visit her homeland and see her family.
Mahuchikh left Ukraine shortly after the invasion, although she admitted it was very difficult to leave her family, especially her father Oleksiy. She finally decided Dnipro was her home, the place where she grew up, and she felt a strong desire to return to her home and her people, to the place where she lived almost her entire life.
Entering the prime years of her professional life, Yaroslava says she will not feel normal until the air raid sirens and missile attacks come to an end.
The reigning high jump outdoor champion has to train abroad, like many of her fellow athletes, but she has made an effort to contribute to the war effort. She has assisted in raising funds for wheelchairs for disabled orphans and donated her Olympic prize money to the Ukrainian army and an animal shelter. She has visited wounded Ukrainian soldiers in Dnipro and Kyiv, bringing along her gold medal to show and inspire them.
Mahuchikh enjoyed an emotional reunion with her father who got to see her Olympic gold medal. He had seen her performance at the Paris Games, but did not get to see her world record leap because of a livestream malfunction. He was told by friends that his daughter had jumped 2.10 meters.
When asked about her passion for the high jump, Mahuchikh made an animal analogy, being the animal lover she is.
“I am ready to fly like a swallow,” she explained in her interview with AFP. “Your body takes off for several seconds, you fly.”
Yaroslava Oleksivna Mahuchikh was born Sept. 19, 2001, in Dnipropetrovsk (now Dnipro) to mother Olha, a gymnast who also did athletics, and father Oleksiy, a canoeist. An older sister, Anastasia, practiced karate competitively and was also into athletics.
Yaroslava’s first sport was karate at age seven, following her sister. After a few lessons in karate class didn’t pan out, her sister brought her to a local sports club to try athletics. Training under her sister’s coach, Mahuchikh competed as a sprinter, hurdler and long lumper. A change in coaches at age 13 saw her deepen her love for sports and begin to develop a specialization in the high jump.
In addition to athletics, Yaroslava took singing and art lessons, growing to like drawing and painting, even taking part in art contests through age 15. Dreams of becoming a singer or artist gave way to an interest in track and field and a goal of eventually becoming a coach.
She won her first gold medal in her youth career in May 2017 and two months later won gold at the U-18 Championships with a world age best jump of 1.92 meters. Medals kept coming her way at international events and in 2019 she jumped 1.95m, equaling the world U-20 indoor record. That same year she became the youngest athlete ever to win a Diamond League event at 17 years and 226 days. In June 2019 Yaroslava became the youngest jumper in history to clear 2.0 meters.
In January 2020 she jumped over 2.02 meters setting a new U-20 indoor record. Thirteen months later she cleared 2.06, the highest any woman had jumped indoors since 2012 and placed third on the world indoor all-time list. In 2021 she won her first European indoor title in March and in August she earned a bronze medal in the high jump at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
The following year had Mahuchikh winning her first World Indoor title (in March), first European Championship (August) and first Diamond League title (September). In 2023 she won gold at the European Indoor Championships, the World Championships and the Diamond League Final.
Yaroslava has utilized her social media platform as a Ukrainian sports star to support the ban of Russian and Belarusian athletes from international sports competitions. She has publicly condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine since it happened.
Mahuchikh has assisted Ukraine’s war effort in a number of ways, including supporting the Ukrainian art project “Stolen Art,” by donating parts of her Olympics prize money to animal rights groups, the Ukrainian military’s Azov’s Angels Patronage Service, to the Hospitallers to fund treatment and recovery of wounded soldiers with head injuries, and to provide vehicles for combat units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the frontlines. She donated her 2024 Paris Olympics competition bib to a charity auction where it sold for some $7,200 to help with military rebuilding.
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