Ukraine’s Yaroslava Mahuchikh and Iryna Gerashchenko went 1-2 at the last European Athletics Indoor Championships in 2021 and history repeated itself at the 2023 Internationales Springer-Meeting in the German city of Cottbus on Wednesday night.
The World Athletics Indoor Tour Bronze meeting saw Mahuchikh duplicate her victory and winning height of 1.98m from the last edition of the meeting in 2020.
The 21-year-old reigning European champion, indoors and out, was flawless up to 1.98m; clearing all four of her heights up to this point and feeling confident enough to go straight from 1.90m to 1.96m en route to the deciding bar.
After a comfortable clearance at 1.98m to clinch the win, Mahuchikh then had the bar raised to a world-leading height – and meeting record-equalling mark – of 2.02m but notched up her first failures of the night although she had three more-than-respectable attempts.
However, despite Mahuchikh's dominance, all credit should go to her friend and compatriot Gerashchenko who matched her up to 1.96m, just two centimetres below the latter’s indoor personal best, albeit after flirting with danger when needing three attempts to clear both 1.87m and 1.93m.
The Ukraine pair have now finished 1-2 in the same order as Cottbus in their last three encounters, and no less than 10 times in their 37 competitive encounters – with Mahuchikh having a 31-6 head-to-head-record.
They are scheduled to meet several more times during the indoor season across the next six weeks, not least at the Banskobystrická latka – the famed indoor high jump meeting in the Slovak town of Banska Bystrica – on 14 February and the Istanbul 2023 European Athletics Indoor Championships, which will be held between 2-5 March.
Full results of the meeting can be found here.
European Athletics is live streaming at least nine of the World Athletics Indoor Tour Silver and Bronze meetings this winter, as part of ‘The Road to Istanbul’.
The next scheduled broadcast is the Hvězdy v Nehvizdech meeting, a specialist field events meeting, in the Czech town of Nehvizdy on Tuesday 31 January.