A few days ago, 400-meter hurdles world record holder Karsten Warholm sat at a press round for his supplier, in front of a house that the sponsor had equipped with video consoles, a tortilla buffet and, of course, stylish sports shoes. Warholm had been struggling with a torn hamstring for the past few weeks, the aftermath of which would prevent him from defending his title on Tuesday (the Norwegian finished seventh, in 48.42 seconds). The last time had been “hell” for him, he complained at the sponsor meeting – before he noticed that Yaroslava Mahuchich, from Dnipro in the Ukraine, was sitting next to him. “Of course I don’t know,” Warholm added, “what real hell looks like.”
There are currently two volume levels at the World Championships in Eugene when the track and field athletes from Ukraine shine in the limelight: Very loud when they are presented before their competitions or when they win medals. And very, very quietly as they talk about how they’re doing, as ambassadors in spikes, competing for a country that’s shrinking a little more on the world map every day.
Since February 24, the first day of the Russian war of aggression, not a day has passed since Ukrainian athletes and coaches have been swept by a wave of support, footballers, tennis players, biathletes, who have gone to war. Mahuchich, a 1.92 meter high jumper with a steady gaze, was woken up by the bombs with which the Russians attacked the airport in her home in eastern Ukraine at the end of February. She hid in the neighboring village, with her coach Tetiana Stepanova. There they trained in a hall, and when the sirens wailed, they ran to the basement.
On March 6, Mahuchich, her boyfriend, her trainer and her husband got into a car, via Moldova (including a five-hour wait at the border) and Romania, they drove to Serbia for three days. Shortly thereafter, Mahutschich won gold at the World Indoor Championships in Belgrade. She wore yellow and blue eyeliner and yellow and blue painted fingernails, as she did on Tuesday when she finished second in Eugene, behind Australia’s Eleanor Patterson.
Solidarity: Yaroslava Mahuchich keeps the memory of the war in Ukraine alive, which is disappearing more and more in the news rush.
(Photo: Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters)
“I enjoyed the atmosphere today, the competition, every jump,” said the 20-year-old. Whether she managed the 2.02 meters not in the first attempt (like Patterson), but in the second – what counts against a real crisis? After the World Cup title in Belgrade, many people wrote to her that they had at least a brief reason to smile. That, Mahutschich said on Tuesday, has always carried her over the past few months, even if she often sat in her room in the evenings, crying.
Almost all Ukrainian track and field athletes brought their stories with them when they arrived at the training camps before the World Cup, in Herzogenaurach at Mahutschich’s outfitter, in Turkey, most recently in Chula Vista near San Diego, a World Cup camp that the World Association co-financed. The stories, say many athletes, are both scary and motivating. Iryna Geraschenko, fourth on Tuesday in Eugene with a personal best (2.00 meters), said that she spent a week in her parents’ unheated basement in Kyiv before she drove to the World Indoor Championships in Belgrade via western Ukraine. High jumper Andriy Protsenko, third at the World Championships on Monday, recalled fleeing his native Kherson with just a rucksack and the belongings of his five-year-old and nine-month-old daughters. As soon as he was abroad, he trained well, but the material was never the problem anyway. “The problem is,” he said, “finding the motivation.”
Mahutschich crosses 2.02 meters – but because she needs one more try than the winner Patterson from Australia, she wins silver.
(Photo: Gregory Bull/AP)
That is perhaps the greatest burden – and the greatest merit – for a 20-year-old like Mahutschich: keeping alive the memory of this war, which is drowning a little more in the news rush every day. Mahutschich recently published a picture of a bombed-out training ground in his home country on social media. “Our young athletes can’t train at home, can’t compete,” she said in Eugene. She vehemently agreed that Russian track and field athletes, who are already largely banned due to endemic doping, should continue to be excluded from events. She recalled Marija Lassizkene, the Tokyo Olympic champion from Russia, her biggest rival, who recently complained in a letter to IOC President Thomas Bach that she was being excluded because she had a Russian passport. “At the same time, my people are dying because we are Ukrainians,” Mahuchich said. “I just don’t want to see murderers on the track. Many Russian athletes supported this war. It’s unbelievable that around 100 of our athletes died in it.”
After great moments, athletes are often asked where they are going now, in the life of an athlete things always have to go on. Mahutschich spoke in Eugene about the EM in three weeks, and after that, she said, “I hope I can visit my parents at home”. One only had to look into her tear-filled eyes to get an idea of how realistic this is.