Ukrainian high-jumper Yaroslava Mahuchikh has won an emotional gold medal in the women's high jump at the World Athletics Indoor Championships three weeks after fleeing her home in Dnipro as Russian forces continued to invade the country.
The Olympic bronze medallist hid in a cellar before making the 2,000km trip over three panic-stricken days to Belgrade, where the Championships took place.
The reigning European indoor high jump champion and her team reached Serbia after "hundreds of phone calls, many changes of direction, explosions, fires, and air raid sirens."
She overcame Australia's Eleanor Patterson to claim the gold medal in the high jump final, sailing over 2.02m, which Patterson failed to clear.
Her team-mate, Iryna Gerashchenko, also fled Ukraine with little more than her valuables and the clothes on her back. She finished fifth in the high jump with a best of 1.92m.
It was none the less a milestone night for two of Australia's indoor athletes with Patterson soaring to silver while Ash Moloney battling to heptathlon bronze.
The pair opened the 15-strong team's medal account on Saturday in the first world indoors competition to be staged for four years.
Patterson set the ball rolling in the morning session as she soared over the landmark 2-metres mark for the first time in her distinguished career to also add 1 centimetre to her own Commonwealth record.
Eventually she lost out to Mahuchikh in a final that left the entire Belgrade Arena high on emotion, with fans waving Ukranian flags and giving the Ukranian a standing ovation when the medals were awarded.
"It felt like a special competition out there," explained 25-year-old Patterson.
"The hardships the Ukrainian athletes have gone through, no-one deserves to go through.
"The journey they've gone on just to get here is incredible. I'm incredibly proud of Yaroslava and what's she's been able to do here — amazing."
In the evening, Moloney — the exciting young multi-eventer — kept battling through the pain barrier to complete a gruelling 1,000-metres race in the last of the seven events and added the heptathlon bronze to his Olympic decathlon bronze he won in Tokyo last year.
It was another precocious effort from the 22-year-old Queenslander, who had never had a single competition indoors before and was concerned about aggravating a knee injury which had forced him to pull out of the high jump on Friday.
Source abcnews
