Adeshina, Yeboah challenged by World Athletics’ Paris 2024 Olympics high jump preview

World Athletics looks to have challenged the African duo of two-time African Games and two-time African Athletics Championships queen, Rose Yeboah of Ghana and Nigeria’s Temitope Adeshina after leaving the duo out of likely medal winners in the women’s high jump event at the Paris 2024 Olympics.

Yeboah and Adeshina have both cleared 1.97m this year and are joint seventh in the 2024 world list but World Athletics believes, and rightly so too, that medalists in the event will have to clear at least 2m.

That is now the challenge thrown at the African duo, who must now break new grounds in historic proportions.

Both will not only be soaring to new lifetime bests but will also be making history as their respective country’s first to hit the 2m mark and win a medal in at the Olympics, that is if they both clear a height high enough to get them to the podium.

South African, Hestrie Cloete won the silver medal at the 2000 and 2004 editions of the Games.

World Athletics has made Yaroslava Mahuchikh the overwhelming favourite to win after the Ukrainian cleared 2.10m to break Bulgarian, Stefka Kostadinova 37 year old 2.09m world record.

Before soaring to the highest height ever by a woman at the Meeting de Paris Diamond League meeting in Paris, the Ukrainian had improved her personal best of 2.06m which was the highest height cleared by any woman in 2021, 2022 and 2023 to 2.07 at the same meeting.

World Athletics believes only the duo of Olympic silver medalist and world indoor champion Nicola Olyslagers and 2022 world champion Eleanor Patterson can challenge offer any reasonable challenge to Mahuchikh albeit Patterson has not reached Yeboah and Adeshina’s height so far this year.

In fact there are just five women that have cleared at least 2m this year and only four of them will be in Paris.