Olympic High Jumpers Earn Medals, Chart Courses for LA28 at Tokyo 2025 World Championships

The best quote heard in the media mixed zone at Tokyo 2025 came from Ukraine high jump phenom Yaroslava Mahuchikh on the event's closing night. 

Carrying her rain-soaked sleeping bag less than an hour after earning a shared World Athletics Championship bronze with Serbia's Angelina Topic, and still dripping from the downpour that added tense competition delays and several inches of water to the landing pit, Mahuchikh spoke only of the good perceived from defending her 2023 Budapest and Paris 2024 golds (she also earned a bronze at Japan National Stadium at the Tokyo Olympics).

Paraphrasing here, "This gives me incentive to work toward [the next championships] and LA28." 

No tears. No frustration. No vent. Just focus on the lessons learned and what's next, spoken like a true champion. 

"I will learn from this," the world record holder added. 

Though she was calm and confident at the same media row at Tokyo, first-time and fellow bronze winner Topic -- who left Budapest in seventh and qualified for the Paris finals but no results due to injury -- was a tearful ball of nerves during the "excruciating" wait for the evening's last jumps. 

From my second-row seat near the trackside spot where Topic consulted her coach between leaps, by the middle of the first cloudburst she was pacing and paused to clasp her hands and stare sideways as though mimicking "Mater Dolorosa" (right) spotted the previous evening in Japan's National Museum of Western Art. 

When the scoreboard finally revealed bronze was secure, she fell to her knees with relief. 

"It was the most stressful two hours of my life," Topic said. "I was sitting with [Nicola] Olyslagers from Australia, and she was holding me like a baby."

With Topic and Mahuchikh each soaring 1.97m, it was Olyslagers who brought home gold at 2m as her follow up to Olympic silver last year and bronze at Budapest 2023. 

Poland's Maria Zodzik surprised herself and the world by winning silver with her personal best jump (also 2m -- my seatmates from Warsaw were over the moon). All four medalists competed at Japan National Stadium previously at the 2020 Olympics. 

Also impressive: Three-time Olympian and Paris bronze medalist Eleanor Patterson (AUS), Yuliia Levchenko (UKR) also a three-time Olympian, 2024 Olympian Christina Honsel (GER), thrice Olympian Morgan Lake (GBR) and Paris Olympian Elena Kulichenko, the recent University of Georgia grad/NCAA champ jumping for Cyprus who answered questions after the mid-meet qualifier.  

For all the rain-soaked drama, check out this NRG Sport roundup for the women's high jump final (the last photo at the base of this post is a screen shot of this blogger seated at Mahuchikh's penultimate jump).

Photo credits: Top image by Ashley Landis/Associated Press; Yaroslava and Angelina rain photos by Louise Delmotte/Associated Press; painting by Carlo Dolci via Japan National Museum of Western Art; tearful Angelina Topic with hands via Serbian Times; all photos in Tokyo 2025 mixed zone and trackside photos (below) copyright Nicholas Wolaver not for use without written permission.