Mariya Lasitskene is due to make her season’s debut at the prestigious Banska Bystrica high jump meeting in Slovakia on 15 February, a World Athletics Indoor Tour Silver meeting.
The meeting, with English-language commentary, will be shown live on the European Athletics YouTube channel. The women's competition with a star-studded international field starts at 1700 CET with the men's competition getting underway at 1900 CET.
Lasitskene was forced to cancel a number of planned competitions due to illness but the reigning world, Olympic and European champion is due to make a belated season’s debut in Banska Bystrica next Tuesday when she will be looking for her third victory having triumphed in 2018 and 2019.
Lasitskene is part of an elite line-up in the women’s competition which features five athletes who have cleared 2.00m or higher including two-time winner Yaroslava Mahuchikh from Ukraine who memorably soared clear at 2.06m twelve months ago, one of the highlights of the entire indoor season.
That first-time clearance at 2.06m from Mahuchikh, who also won in 2020, was not only a meeting record but also eclipsed the Ukrainian record of 2.05m which had been held by Inha Babakova since 1995, six years before Mahuchikh was born. That clearance was also the highest jump ever achieved by a teenager.
The women’s line-up also features Mahuchikh’s training partner and 2017 Banska Bystrica winner Iryna Herashchenko along with joint European leaders Emily Borthwick from Great Britain and Montenegro’s Marija Vukovic, both of whom cleared 1.95m in Hustopece earlier this month to finish first and second respectively on countback.
The men's line-up is headed by Olympic fourth-placer Sang-Hyeok Woo from South Korea who cleared a world lead of 2.36m in Hustopece on Saturday evening. The assembled field also features JuVaughn Harrison from the United States and 2020 Banska Bystrica winner Luis Enrique Zayas from Cuba along with leading European jumpers Ilya Ivanyuk, an authorised neutral athlete who won bronze at the 2019 World Athletics Championships, and Ukraine's Andriy Protsenko.