Yaroslava Mahuchikh and Kateryna Tabashnyk of Ukraine
(Picture: Getty Images)Ukrainian high-jump star Yaroslava Mahuchikh says there is no place for Russian “killers” at this month’s World Athletics Championships.
Mahuchikh is Ukraine’s leading medal hope at the championships, which begin in Oregon, USA, tomorrow, having won silver in Doha in 2019, as well as bronze at last year’s Olympics in Tokyo.
The 20-year-old’s chances will be boosted by the absence of three-time world champion Mariya Lasitskene, who is barred from competing as part of a blanket ban on Russian athletes in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine.
The Russian federation was already banned from international events as punishment for its state-sponsored doping programme, but Lasitskene had been one of a number of athletes competing as an authorised neutral, including when winning gold in Tokyo.
The defending champion protested her exclusion to the International Olympic Committee without success and Mahuchikh has no sympathy for her rival.
"Before February 24 we had a good relationship, we talked," Mahuchikh said, in reference to the day Russia invaded Ukraine. "But this day changed everything because [Lasitskene] didn't write anything to our athletes. "But then she wrote to [IOC president] Thomas Bach so she could compete because you're Russian. Our people die because they're Ukrainian.
"I don't want to see on the track killers because it's really killed a lot of sportsmen this war.”
Mahuchikh won an emotional gold medal at this year’s World Indoor Championships in Belgrade, just weeks after the war began, having fled her home city of Dnipro by car, and says she is desperate to deliver a similar morale-boosting success.
“Hopefully it will be good news for the Ukrainian people," she said. "It is difficult mentally, but I believe we will win and come back to our life and will always remember this period of time."
