BRNO, Czech Republic – It was an unusual place to hold a high jump competition – a parking lot in front of a shopping center in late June. Customers stopped briefly with their bags. A group of spectators, including Ukrainian war refugees, who found a moment to cheer, stood by a railing. Human statues, painted gold, froze in poses like ancient Olympians. Cars and trucks raced south on the highway towards Slovakia.
If it wasn’t a traditional meeting, nothing lately has been the norm for Yaroslava Mahuchikh, 20, of Ukraine, the displaced Olympic bronze medalist who is the gold medal favorite at the World Athletics Championships, which begins in Eugene, Ore, on Friday started.
On February 24, Mahuchikh (pronounced ma-GU-chi-huh or ma-HU-chick) was jolted awake by a tremor in Dnipro, her hometown in east-central Ukraine. Russia had begun its invasion. An explosion caught on video shot into the dark sky. Dnipro Airport and nearby military installations had been attacked.
Mahuchikh called her parents and coach, then traveled to her coach’s home in the nearby village of Sukhachivka, believing it would be safer there. They developed a routine, rushing down to the basement when warning sirens sounded, and training in a gym when possible. They soon left the country. How long, no one knew.
On March 6, Mahuchikh, her coach, her coach’s husband and her coach’s son, who is also Mahuchikh’s boyfriend, began a three-day odyssey by car to Belgrade, Serbia to compete in the World Indoor Athletics Championships.
Mahuchikh defiantly and respectfully wore yellow eyeliner and painted her fingernails yellow and blue, the national colors of Ukraine, at the world gathering. And despite the tragic disruptions of war and the emotional hardship of leaving her family behind, she won first place and received loud applause.
“The result showed that Ukraine is a strong, independent country that doesn’t need Russia,” Mahuchikh’s coach Tetiana Stepanova, 56, said through an interpreter at the high jump competition in Brno, the Czech Republic’s second-largest city. Brno is about two hours southeast of Prague, the capital.
Sport has become a sign of unity, triumph, resilience and perseverance for Ukraine. The men’s national football team received international acclaim this spring when they bravely tried and narrowly failed to qualify for the World Cup, which will be held in Qatar in November and December.
“I protect Ukraine on the track,” Mahuchikh said. “Some protect Ukraine in art. We all pull together.”
Yet the sport’s jubilant statistics offer only a slight distraction from the dismal statistics of the war. Even according to conservative estimates, tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians have died in Ukraine. People are hiding in basements, and children’s toys now contain rocket parts, Stepanova said with sad eloquence.
For now, at least, Mahuchikh feels it is too risky to return to Ukraine and even if she did, leaving repeatedly for the international circuit would be too difficult. She lived in Germany and Turkey for months before heading to California in early July to prepare for the Outdoor World Championships.
Her mother, sister and niece left Ukraine and moved to Germany with her. But her father and grandmother remain in Dnipro. It is a hub for humanitarian aid, military resistance and freshly dug graves arranged in rows like deserted fields. It wasn’t reduced to rubble like Mariupol and other cities in the east, but there rockets were fired at civilian targets and the airport was destroyed.
When a violent storm recently thundered violently, Mahuchikh said, her terrified grandmother thought it was the rumble of a bombing raid. Other Ukrainian high jumpers who joined her in the Czech Republic in June brought their own heartbreaking stories.
Maryna Kovtunova, 15, is the Ukrainian youth champion turned Mahuchikh’s protégé. As Kovtunova fled Mariupol with her mother and father in March after her apartment was destroyed, she said a bullet was apparently fired into the family’s car by a sniper. It hit the rear window, bounced off and got stuck in the windshield. Kovtunova has a photo on her phone showing her holding the ball, the tip of which is vaguely curved like a rhino’s horn.
The caption translates as: “I’m alive, but this bullet almost hit me. I bent down in time.”
Kateryna Tabashnyk, 28, said her family’s home in the eastern city of Kharkiv was hit by a rocket, injuring her 8-year-old nephew. He was taken to the hospital, she said, and one of his kidneys was removed. She has lived in Spain, which, like other European countries, has offered housing and training opportunities to exile Ukrainians.
“The most difficult thing is that I had to go away for a long time without the opportunity to take her with me,” Tabashnyk said through an interpreter.
When Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, was attacked, Iryna Gerashchenko, 27, who finished fourth in the high jump at the Tokyo Olympics, spent a week sheltering in her parents’ cold basement with her husband and dog. Then she traveled to western Ukraine without even a training uniform or spikes. For several days she trained in the sneakers of a teammate’s mother. Finally, a friend delivered workout clothes and shoes in a care package sent by her parents. Gerashchenko then drove on to Belgrade with three teammates, where she finished fifth at the World Indoor Championships.
She later moved to training camps in Portugal and Poland, but as the Outdoor World Championships approached, Gerashchenko hopped from one competition to another across Europe, her belongings stowed in two suitcases. She hasn’t seen her parents for more than four months.
“I want to hug her,” she said.
Mahuchikh and Stepanova, her coach, set off on their March odyssey to Belgrade, carrying with them a digital letter from the Ukrainian Athletics Federation explaining their reason for leaving the country. But there was a five-hour wait at the western border with Moldova due to traffic and confirmation of their travel documents. Mahuchikh slept in the car as the 72-hour journey continued through Moldova, Romania and Serbia. Aside from stops to eat and refuel, her driver, Stepanova’s husband Serhii Stepanov, only napped for three hours.
How could he stay up so long? He shrugged, smiled and said, “Five Red Bulls.”
On June 22, Mahuchikh competed in one of Europe’s most quirky competitions, the Brnenska Latka, roughly translated as Brno’s (high jump) bar, in the Czech Republic. It’s been held for 25 years, often at the Olympia Mall (hence the living statues holding spears and discus). This year, for the first time, it took place in the shopping center parking lot.
One of the organizers of the meeting, Simon Zdenek, was a boy in 1968, during the communist era, when he held his father’s hand and saw Soviet tanks roll in to crush a period of reform in Czechoslovakia known as the Prague Spring. “Never forget that,” his father told him. He didn’t have that, said Zdenek. The day before the competition, he drove an hour and a half to pick up Gerashchenko, the Ukrainian touring star, at the airport in Vienna.
“We understand what they’re going through,” said Zdenek. “We want to help them”
Two brothers from Dnipro, Yegor and Nikita Chesak, elite hurdlers and quarter mile runners now temporarily living near Brno, brought a blue and yellow national flag to cheer on Mahuchikh and other Ukrainian jumpers. Serhiy Slisenko, 25, traveled 13 or 14 hours by bus from Lviv in western Ukraine to compete in the men’s high jump competition and jumped to his best height so far outdoors.
“It’s really important to do everything to show that you are Ukrainian and that you can do your best even under these difficult circumstances,” said Slisenko.
Mahuchikh sported blue and yellow eyeliner and a pendant in the shape of Ukraine. Gerashchenko wore a blue and yellow ribbon in his hair and a blue and yellow ring on his hand. A small group of Ukrainian spectators, displaced persons and residents of Brno, cheered them on and said: “Jump, jump, jump, let’s go, you can do it!”
The excitement and closeness of the small crowd against the backdrop of the war gave the competition urgent energy. Mahuchikh prevailed with a jump of 6ft 8in or 2.03m, the best in the world that year. Her back and legs seemed to be as pointed as the roof of a house as she climbed the victorious height.
Russians, including reigning Olympic champion in women’s high jump Mariya Lasitskene, are banned from the Oregon World Championships because of the invasion. It was right to exclude the Russians, Mahuchikh said, adding, “Human lives are more important than competition.”
This fall she hopes to return safely to Dnipro to see her father and grandmother. She feels it is her duty to tell her story and the story of her country, but Mahuchikh is only 20 and being a high jumper and a war ambassador hasn’t always been easy.
“Mentally, it’s so difficult,” she said. “I have to focus on competing and training, but sometimes I cry in the room. Now I think all Ukrainians live the same. You want to go home. They want to see their husbands and their fathers.”