Ukraine’s Yaroslava Mahuchikh has won the women’s high jump final during The World Athletics Indoor Championships 2022.
 

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 and world outdoor silver in Doha in 2019, left her home in Dnipro just three weeks ago as the conflict escalated.

She found her way to Serbia after “hundreds of phone calls, many changes of direction, explosions, fires, and air raid sirens”.

Coming into the competition at 1.88m, Mahuchikh had a failure at 1.92 and two at 2.00 before making the latter height.

She sailed over 2.02 to ramp up the pressure on Eleanor Patterson. The Australian responded by passing, so the bar was raised to 2.04m.

But when Patterson failed at the new height, Mahuchikh was left celebrating in the Stark Arena, the crowd rising for a standing ovation with a handful of Ukrainian flags fluttering