As Jaroslava Mavchik laced up her orange trainers, prepared for her run-up, and couldn’t contain her smile, she would be Olympic champion – a certainty after her favourite Australian rival, Nicola Ollis-Lagerth, missed 2.02 metres on her third attempt.
This attempt at 2.04m was meant to be ritualistic, procedural, a glorious run with victory already assured. Like the silver medalist, she ultimately fell short of the bar, but that didn’t matter. Within minutes, she and her compatriot Irina Gerashchenko, who won bronze, were marching around the track carrying Ukrainian flags, and the crowd was on its feet, applauding the talent of what could be the greatest athlete of all time.
The previous night, Ukrainian fencing icon Olha Harlan staged a stunning upset in the women’s sabre team event to lead Ukraine to its first gold medal at this most significant Olympic Games. It was a fitting moment, 16 years after Harlan’s first victory on this stage. Now, a phenomenal competitor coming into her prime, Makhchik can join the growing list of illustrious women who are showing the world the country’s toughness.
As Ollislagers prepared for her final try, Mahuchik went through her usual Interjump routine, which consisted of snuggling up in a sleeping bag to keep warm, in a style that resembled a cross between a camping trip and a late-night teenage party. Before her second try, she walked out toward the group of Ukrainians behind her on the bottom tier, clearly looking for one last push. In the end, she didn’t need it. Mahuchik can jump better than this, as she proved with a world record of 2.10m last month, but she also outdid Ollislagers in the final with a cleaner jump.
For Mahuchik, it was both a chance to win gold for his country and a chance to start writing a new chapter in his remarkable young life. Less than a month after Russia invaded his home country in February 2022, Mahuchik made the three-day overland journey to Belgrade and promptly became the European Indoor champion.
She had left her home in Dnipro, which is still regularly under attack, to live in a coach house in the countryside, hiding in the basement when the sirens sounded. Nothing that had happened in Paris had cast any doubt on her tenacity and sheer talent.
She knew she would have an advantage going up against the Olympians in Paris, and she was right, as the competitors struggled and two of the best jumpers in the world faced the ultimate physical and mental test.
An unfortunate ankle fracture for Serbia’s world number three, Angelina Topic, removed a major obstacle, but there was always the wider context of these Olympics and the dark curiosity of how Mahucic would interact with Cyprus’s Jelena Krychenko, the world under-23 champion.
Born near Moscow, Krychenko was able to switch to Cypriot nationality in 2019 due to his father’s work in the country. Russia has already been suspended over a doping scandal, not just this summer, and Mahuchik expressed his unhappiness about facing Krychenko before the tournament, while Krychenko called his colleague’s attitude “unreasonable.”
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In the end, there was little competition between the two, with Krychenko failing to clear the 1.98m bar and already eliminated by the time the sport’s superstars collided, while the 29-year-old veteran quickly found herself sharing third place with Australian Eleanor Patterson in a memorable display of Ukrainian prowess.
This is not Makhchik’s first experience of this. She won bronze in Tokyo and, perhaps buoyed by both war and preternatural calm, has an old brain on her bent shoulders. So were all the national team athletes in Paris. They were not just athletes, and with Karlan, 33, in top form and entering the winter of her career, it seemed significant that Ukraine had a poster girl, a world-famous figure, ready to bang the drum. She has already won it all.
In contrast to the cocoon that Mahuchik has created for herself, Olislagers preferred to relax during the break by reading an old performance notebook. Perhaps the new champion has now written the book on elite performance on this stage. After the awards ceremony, Mahuchik embraced her home supporters before leaving. She will soon return with the pride and energy that her achievement has brought to a struggling country.
