The precocious Angelina Topic scaled new heights at the Serbian Championships in Krusevac on Sunday (26).
Topic had already cleared a world outdoor age-16 best of 1.95m this season but the 16-year-old achieved new superlatives with her third-time clearance at 1.96m.
Her mark equals the world U18 best which is jointly held by four other athletes, including Ukraine’s Yaroslava Mahuchikh, and her clearance is also a Serbian senior record, breaking Mladen Nikolic's record which dates back to 1984.
Competing against athletes up to four years her senior, Topic was a creditable eighth at the European Athletics U20 Championships in Tallinn last July but the 16-year-old will be the prospective favourite for gold at the European Athletics U18 Championships which begin in Jerusalem next Monday (4).
Topic holds the four best jumps in the world at U18 level outdoors in 2022 and she has an eight centimetre ascendency over her nearest rival on the 2022 world U18 list.
The surname of Topic is likely to be familiar to anyone who has followed athletics over the last four decades. Her father Dragutin famously won the European high jump title as a teenager in 1990 and her mother Biljana was the bronze medallist in the triple jump at the 2009 World Athletics Championships.
On the impact of her parents on her nascent career, Topic said: "Of course, I am more than grateful for having them first of all as irreplaceable support in everything I do. I am glad that I have someone on my side who can share their experience with me and makes some unavoidable obstacles which I come across in the sports world easier for me.
"It is because of them that I fell in love with what I do even before I joined them myself."
Other highlights at the Serbian Championships included former European U20 champion Milica Gardasevic winning the long jump with 6.67m and reigning world U20 champion Adriana Vilagos, 18, winning the javelin with 60.00m.