Olympics on her mind, Ukraine in her heart, world-record high jumper goes for a gold medal in Paris

SAINT-DENIS, France (AP) — The best high jumper in Ukraine, and maybe the world, hasn’t spent much time at home the last few years.

Home for Yaroslava Mahuchikh is Dnipro, a city of 1 million located only about 100 kilometers from the front lines of the war with Russia that shows no signs of ending.

On Saturday, Mahuchikh begins her quest for an Olympic gold medal that, to her, feels like nothing — and everything — given the situation back in her country.

“For me, every tournament is important,” she said. “I represent my country, and for Ukraine, every medal is important. I want to show people we’ll never give up and we’ll fight in difficult and different ways.”

When the war started, Mahuchikh piled as much as she could into her car and left town quickly. On her way out, she heard gunfire and could, at times, see shells raining down miles away.

Since then, she has trained and lived in Portugal, Poland, Germany, Belgium, Estonia and a handful of countries in between. She is an athlete without a home, but not an athlete without a country.

“I should show that we'll be fighting, and now I'm competing for my people in Ukraine,” she said. “Because sports gives warm memories and happiness.”

All this upheaval has not impacted Mahuchikh in a bad way, at least not on the field.

Last year, she starred in the emotional high point of the track and field world championships. Wearing blue and yellow eyeliner to match the colors of her nation's flag, Mahuchikh jumped 2.01 meters (6 feet, 7 inches) to win the title, which marked Ukraine's first gold medal in any track and field event at worlds since 2013.

Last month, Mahuchikh broke a 37-year-old world record, jumping 2.10 meters (6'10 3/4'') and setting herself up as the person to beat here in France. She might be the best gold-medal chance of the 143 Ukrainians competing over these 17 days of the Olympics.

“Finally I signed Ukraine to the history of world athletics," she said after breaking the mark.

Mahuchikh is anything but blind to the tension-saturated politics connected to her rise to the top of her sport. The defending Olympic champion is Maria Lasitskene, a Russian who, along with everyone else from her country, has been banned from track and field's international events — that includes the Olympics — since the country invaded Ukraine.

World Athletics President Sebastian Coe said banning Russia wasn't a political statement, but rather one of fairness. Typically, Ukraine has brought around 70 track and field athletes to the Olympics. This year, it brings 26 — a jarring reminder of how the war has devastated the country's once-thriving sports infrastructure along with so much else.

“It is a very constrained world that those athletes have to operate in,” Coe said. “We looked at it as a matter of integrity. Was it fair that those athletes who were going to be so disadvantaged should also (go against) athletes from a country that has shown such aggression?”

Three years ago at the Tokyo Games, the image of Mahuchikh and Lasitskene showing off their medals (the Ukrainian won bronze) with flags draped around their shoulders in a routine post-event photo op brought condemnation out of both countries at a time when tensions between the nations were high.

After the war started, Lasitskene lashed out at IOC President Thomas Bach, who was still forming a policy for Russian athletes' Olympic eligibility, suggesting it might be time to "fall in love with athletes not because of their nationality or citizenship, but because of what those show at competitions.”

But the Olympics are supposed to be as much about the peaceful gathering of nations as the individual athletes themselves.

Mahuchikh never accepted Lasitskene's concept. She pointed out that she hadn't heard a word from Lasitskene since the start of the war, and because of that, wasn't put off by her exclusion from world championships.

Her opinion hasn't changed.

“The Olympic Games are about friends and peace, not war,” she said when asked if Russians should be allowed in the Games.

Once she steps onto the field Saturday, then again Monday if she makes the final, Mahuchikh said she'll focus on jumping, not war. She has become accustomed to separating her sport from everyday life, and blocking out, at least for a time, any worries about loved ones who remain in Dnipro, and the task at hand, which is jumping high.

“Unfortunately, I have two years experience of this behind me,” Mahuchikh said. “But mentally, I’m stronger than I was two years ago.”

Whether or not she wins a medal, Mahuchikh knows the mere fact she's competing on the world stage is a victory. Much of her country's sports infrastructure, to say nothing of its athlete pipeline, has withered under the attacks.

But the Ukrainians are still here — 143 of them competing in Paris, including one gold-medal favorite.

“We will definitely win,” she said. “But in what time, and what price will we pay for this? It's a really big price, the lives of people. We've lost a lot of really good people who are fighting for our country.”

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AP Summer Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games