AFP, Nanjing :
Australia’s Nicola Olyslagers outshone Ukraine’s Olympic champion Yaroslava Mahuchikh to retain her high jump title of World Indoor Athletics Championship in Nanjing on Sunday.
The last time reigning Olympic, world and European indoor/outdoor champion Mahuchikh tasted defeat in the women’s high jump was at the 2024 World Indoor Athletics Championsips in Glasgow where she surrendered her title to Olyslagers.
The Ukrainian, the only athlete in the field to have cleared 2.00m or higher this season, never looked comfortable in Nanjing’s Cube and Olyslagers and Australian teammate Eleanor Patterson took advantage.
Olyslagers, making her season debut in Nanjing, won with a best of 1.97 metres.
Patterson, the 2022 world champion and silver medallist in World Indoor Athletics Championships , took silver on countback, with Mahuchikh claiming bronze (1.95m).
Mahuchikh skipped the opening mark of 1.85m before sailing over 1.89.
American Vashti Cunningham, the 2016 World Indoor Athletics champion and a finalist at the 2024 Paris Olympics, was an early departure after three failed attempts at that height.
Olyslagers and Patterson went clear at 1.92m, with Mahuchikh opting out, but it proved too much for the latter’s teammate Kateryna Tabashnyk and Italian Idea Pieroni. Cypriot Elena Kulichenko went over at the third time of asking.
The bar was raised to 1.95m, proving a problem neither for Mahuchikh nor her Australian rivals and Serbian Angelina Topic.
Kulichenko, American Charity Hufnagel and Germany’s Imke Onnen however all bowed out, leaving four to battle for the three podium spots.
Mahuchikh and Topic, the reigning World Junior Athletics champion, both failed their first attempts at 1.97m as Olyslagers and Patterson sailed over.
The Ukrainian and Serb both opted to skip their second and third jumps as the bar went up to 1.99m.
But they failed to clear that, leaving them in third and fourth places respectively, and an all-Australian shootout for gold.
Patterson paid the price for a missed attempt at 1.92m to hand victory to Olyslagers.
