From teenage prodigy to world record breaker, Yaroslava Mahuchikh’s journey has been nothing short of breathtaking.
At just 18, she burst onto the global stage with silver at the 2019 World Athletics Championships in Doha. Still a teenager, she claimed Olympic bronze in Tokyo. By Paris 2024, she was no longer the rising star-she was the standard.
Champion and record breaker
World champion at Budapest 2023, double European outdoor champion in Munich 2022 and Roma 2024, and gold medals at both the World Indoor Championships and European Indoor Championships, Mahuchikh had already built a career most athletes could only dream of.
But her defining moment came on 7 July 2024 in Paris, when she soared over 2.10m-a leap that erased Stefka Kostadinova’s 37-year-old world record. That summer, Olympic gold followed, confirming her place not just at the top of the high jump, but among the greats of track and field. It also earned her the European Female Athlete of the Year Award at the Golden Tracks Award Ceremony.
Her success is more than an individual triumph. Every jump, every title, has been framed by Ukraine’s ongoing struggle at home. With blue and yellow eye makeup as her trademark, she has turned each competition into a declaration of pride and resilience.
New challenges
Yet even for the unbeatable, challenges return.
In 2025, a heel injury blunted her indoor campaign-gold in at the European Athletics Indoor Championships in Apeldoorn but only bronze in at the Nanjing World Indoor Championships.
Outdoors, the once-untouchable Mahuchikh has faced five defeats, most at the hands of Australia’s Nicola Olyslagers, the current world leader at 2.04m. Still, Mahuchikh’s 2.02m in Zurich hints that her peak is near again, just in time.
Now she returns to Tokyo-the city where her Olympic story began. Can she defend her world title, overcome her rival, and prove once more that no bar is too high? The answer awaits when qualification begins on 18 September.