Ukrainian female high jumpers triumph at European Championship in Istanbul

Yaroslava Mahuchikh of Ukraine on Sunday won the high jump gold medal at the 2023 European Athletics Indoor Championships in Istanbul, Turkey, adding European gold to that of the world last year.

Her teammate, Kateryna Tabashnyk, won bronze. The third member of the Ukrainian team, Yulia Levchenko, showed the fifth result.

Mahuchikh won at 1.98m. Already the champion, she also tried to take 2.03m but failed.

On the medal table, Yaroslava Mahuchikh and Kateryna Tabashnyk were separated by Dutch jumper Britt Weerman, the silver medalist, who finished the competition at 1.96m.

Three athletes mastered 1.94m – Tabashnyk, Angelina Topić of Serbia and Levchenko. Kateryna used fewer attempts and ascended the podium.

For Ukrainian athletes, the value of wartime medals is higher than their “face values.” Mahuchikh, 21, won the 2022 world title just days after fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine, having undertaken a three-day journey by car from Ukraine to Serbia to compete, according to European Athletics.

“A year has passed, but the situation has not changed,” she told Suspilne. “I don’t know what will happen next. Of course, I want the war to end as soon as possible. The Russians are terrorists. Recently, they have again fired a missile at civilians in Zaporizhzhia. It’s terrible. I was back at home in the winter for two weeks, and it allowed me to recover somehow because home is home. But I understand that I must practice abroad if I want to show results. But when you practice abroad, you monitor the news and think, when it all will be over, when everyone can return home to rebuild the country.”

Tabashnyk, 29, suffered a personal tragedy not long ago – her mother was killed in a missile strike on Kharkiv in August. “The Russian world took my mother’s life. They liberated me from my home and my whole life,” Kateryna wrote on Instagram, according to Daily Beast.

In the interview with Suspilne, Mahuchikh said that when stepping up to the podium along with Tabashnyk, keeping Ukrainian flags in their hands, she understood that “we have done our best: we have two awards, the national anthem is played. People hear our national anthem and see our two flags, and it proves that we are unbreakable. And we will fight in all spheres: we were independent, we are independent, and we will be an independent and strong nation.”

Photo: Ukrainian high jumpers Yaroslava Mahuchikh and Kateryna Tabashnyk hug after the competition at the 2023 European Athletics Indoor Championships in Istanbul, where they won gold and bronze, respectively. Getty Images via MSN.

Video: All jumps of Ukrainian female athletes in the final