Yaroslava Mahuchikh is remembering the moment she woke to the sound of rockets and started to laugh hysterically. It was 24 February 2022, the day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the world’s best high jumper was trying to process the unfathomable.
“Of course, we heard a lot of conversations on TV beforehand, but every Ukrainian didn’t believe that it would happen,” she says. “I woke up around half past four or 5am and I heard an explosion. At first I thought, maybe it’s something else. But when I heard a second one I knew that the war had started.
“I called to my father in a hysterical laugh – because when I’m emotional I don’t cry, I laugh – and said to him: ‘The war has started.’ And my father said: ‘What? You’re crazy.’ Then we turned on the news.”
After spending the initial stages of the invasion in her home city of Dnipro, where she delivered humanitarian aid, Mahuchikh decided the best way to help her country was to return to the sporting arena. And so 10 days later, with Kyiv and much of her country still under siege, she risked travelling to the world indoor championships in Belgrade – a journey that took three days by car.
At this point Mahuchikh was just out of her teens, fearing constantly for her kin and country, and having suffered a severely interrupted training schedule. Yet she showed staggering grace and defiance as she cleared 2.02m to win her first senior gold medal.
There have been a great many victories since for the 22-year-old, including at last year’s world championships in Budapest and the recent European championships in Rome, where she again wore yellow and blue eyeliner in support of her country. Each time her message is the same: her athletics success is also a wider victory for Ukraine. “We all are fighting for our people, for our soldiers,” she says. “We want to show every person in the world that we will continue fighting, that the war is not finished.”
But how does she cope with such extraordinary pressures – especially when she carries such weight and expectations into every performance? According to Mahuchikh, much of it is down to her coach, Tetyana Stepanova, who has helped her with the “psychology” of always competing in the moment. “She’s always tells me that it is just you and the bar,” she says. “Of course, it’s difficult to keep your mind focused and to be happy in every moment. But listening to music and reading books, and braiding my hair before competition, helps.”
Doing her hair is a distinctive part of her pre-competition routine, while between jumps Mahuchikh sometimes takes off her shoes and socks to help reset her mind. As for the books, when she was young she loved to read Harry Potter to help her learn English. Nowadays she prefers romantic fiction, stories on how Netflix and Starbucks became successful, and biographies – recent reads include Will Smith and Coco Chanel.
For now, though, all roads lead to Paris where she is determined to get an upgrade on the bronze medal she won in Tokyo. “It’s very important because the Olympic Games is the biggest event in sport,” she says, speaking to the Observer at a Puma event in the French capital. “And if we win a gold medal, then it’s like we show we’ll continue fighting and we’ll never give up.”
She will be a warm favourite in Paris, and with good reason given she has already won a dozen senior medals and titles. That achievement is even more impressive when you consider she started high jumping comparatively late, aged 13, after initially doing karate with her sister and competing in sprints, hurdles and the long jump. She wasn’t entirely a natural either – at least not immediately. “My first attempt was at 1.45 metres and I hit the bar,” she says, smiling.
After another failed attempt using a scissor kick, her coach taught her how to do the Fosbury flop, and the rest is history. After that progress was rapid. Two years later, Mahuchikh cleared 1.92m to win the world under-18 title when she was just 15. And her “dream” is to raise her personal best of 2.06m to 2.10m – and past Stefka Kostadinova’s world record, which has stood since 1987.
Away from the track, Mahuchikh has posed for Elle and Vogue Ukraine and even appeared on the runway at New York fashion week, and she reacts in disbelief when people suggest that she shouldn’t combine a sports career with occasional forays into fashion. “These days sport gives you a lot of possibilities to try different things like modelling,” she says. “The rules have changed.”
She also understands the power of social media, and regularly posts pictures of herself training, doing Tik Toks or modelling kit to her 190,000 followers on Instagram. Her feed also features photographs of her cat, Lara, who she rescued from a shelter four years ago. Mahuchikh jokes that he used to jump like her but now he is a little fatter, that is no longer the case.
Sadly she has rarely seen Lara since leaving Ukraine for Germany and then Portugal, where she now lives and trains. But she yearns for the day she can be with him permanently again. “He stays at home with my brother-in-law in Dnipro but he’s in good condition,” she adds. “Of course I miss him but one day I will come back and hug him.”
But her social media also does not flinch from showing the grim reality of life in Ukraine, including the aftermath of one rocket attack that destroyed the sports college in Dnipro where she started her career and used to train.
Such incidents, she says, show why it was right for World Athletics to ban all Russian and Belarusian athletes from the Olympics – and for the west to continue to stand by her country’s fight for survival.
“In Ukraine it’s continual war,” she says. “My message is that we are fighting for peace in the world. And I want to say that we need your help, because if we lose, all the world loses, not only Ukraine.”
