In between jumps, Yaroslava Mahuchikh returns to her bench, crawls under a sleeping bag she always brings with her into the arena, rests her head on her backpack and lets her eyes drift closed. She lets her thoughts wash over her. Sometimes, she opens her eyes and stares up at the night sky. In the cauldron of an Olympic final, among a crowd of 80,000: this, ironically, is the only place Mahuchikh can find peace.
She doesn’t actually fall asleep. “But I close my eyes,” Mahuchikh says. “I have a camping blanket that’s cool for any temperature. It can be hot or cold and it will be good. It’s my relaxation before jumps, trying to think only about jumps, noticing how I feel comfortable.”
Certainly there is precious little peace available to her here, in the packed La Villette folly Ukraine have made their base for the Olympics. The room is packed with photographers and journalists and dignitaries from all over the world and all of them want a piece of the new high jump gold medallist: a selfie, an autograph, an interview. There is a glazed, dazed look to her. She’s barely slept an hour. Straight after this interview she has to return to the stadium to collect her medal.
There is precious little peace available to her back home. She comes from Dnipro, in the centre of Ukraine, a city of one million in the good times but considerably fewer than that now, a city still under constant shelling by Russian missiles. Friends and family keep her updated with the latest news. Rocket attacks are conveyed to her on the family WhatsApp group.
“I’m now 22 but I feel that a lot of things happened to me,” she says. “Every time there is a rocket attack I think I can lose my parents, my family. Unfortunately a lot of children are now without parents.
“We live in the 21st century. We have technology, we have liberty, the world is moving forward. We should be travelling and exchanging experience, but we can’t do it because we need to fight for our country.”
Asked what she misses most about Dnipro before the war, Mahuchikh says: “Good memories with my friends,” she says. “It’s where we grew up together. The coffee. Dnipro is the capital of coffee, a lot of cafes.
“And I really miss the atmosphere when people could be happy. Because every time you’re happy now, your mind comes back to the soldiers who lost their lives, who left their families to protect us.”
Dnipro is where she discovered her love of athletics. She first came to track and field when she was seven and tried everything she could find: hurdles, jumps, throws. But soon it was the high jump that began to consume her. “I liked the feeling of lightness,” she says. “After the youth world championships in Kenya, where I won, I got that this was my work, my passion, and I wanted to win a gold medal someday.”
The day the Russians invaded, Mahuchikh grabbed as many of her belongings as she could find, stuffed them into her car and left. From a nearby village, the Ukrainian athletics federation sought a route to get her out of the country. The drive to Belgrade took more than three days, incorporating detours and roadblocks, distant explosions and the faint ring of air raid sirens. She now trains in Portugal, having also made her home in Germany, Estonia and Belgium over the past couple of years.
Now into its third summer, the war feels as inexorable as ever. For those of us removed from its horrors, there is an understandable sense of helplessness, perhaps even a kind of paralysis in the face of this endlessly repeating tragedy. So – you know – what can athletes tangibly do, beyond offering Ukrainians a little fleeting levity? What can the rest of us do?
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“We talk with international media, that’s really important,” Mahuchikh says. “We try, like every Ukrainian, to donate, to help people, to buy something for our army. And the United Kingdom has really helped us. A lot of Ukrainians have come there.
“Every country should unite. The war started in 2014 with Luhansk and Donetsk and now they say we can stop the war if we give them territory. It’s not possible. We should fight until the end.”
So it is for Mahuchikh the athlete, whose campaign is not yet over. She has three more meets this year, including the Diamond League Final in Brussels in September, and then a long winter training block. First, though, home. “I’m looking forward to come back to my own city, to see my family and friends and celebrate this gold medal with them,” she says.
Outside, in the courtyard, a big screen shows the Olympic action on a rolling loop. Punters sit under parasols and sup borscht and other traditional Ukrainian snacks. Alongside them, a strange monument has been erected. It is a stand of seats prised from the Sonyachny Stadium in Kharkiv, now destroyed by Russian shelling, installed in the heart of Ukraine’s Olympics as a bleak reminder of everything that has been taken from them.