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.
His final total of 6,344 points, in his debut at the event, smashed the national and Oceanian indoor record of 5,949 set by Gary Haasbroek three years earlier.
Yet Moloney could not quite match another young gun, Swiss silver medallist Simon Ehammer (6,363) nor Canada's magnificent Olympic decathlon champ Damian Warner, who was in a class of his own as he broke his own Commonwealth record with 6,489.
There may be more Australian medals to come as Catriona Bisset and Ollie Hoare both reached middle-distance finals in impressive fashion.
Melbourne's Bisset will go into the 800m final on Sunday evening as second-fastest qualifier after continuing her fine form by clocking 2min 01.24sec as runner-up in the fastest heat behind the impressive Ethiopian Habitam Alemu.
US-based Hoare then made it into the 1,500m final, also finishing runner-up in his heat, in 3:38.43.
The man to beat, though, will be Norwegian phenomenon Jakob Ingebrigtsen, who recently broke the world record and eased ominously into the final, finishing second in his heat.
AAP/ABC
