In 2024, Mahuchikh and Duplantis both achieved world records in their respective sports and took home European and Olympic championships. By the way, both winners have already won the Rising Star trophy, which honours the best young athletes in Europe.
Adriana Vilagos, a silver medallist in the European javelin for Serbia, and Niels Laros, a sixth-place finisher in the Olympic 1500m from the Netherlands, are this year’s Rising Star winners.
Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski of the Republic of North Macedonia attended the Golden Tracks awards ceremony, which took place in the city’s National Opera and Ballet building. Additionally, the event was broadcast live on the European Athletics YouTube account and nationwide on television.
For the first time, Yaroslava Mahuchikh won the title of women’s European Athlete of the Year, defeating Olympic and European champions Keely Hodgkinson and Femke Bol, who won the title in 2022 and 2023.
Before winning the set of major gold medals in the high jump at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, Mahuchikh, who was given her trophy by European Athletics President Dobromir Karamarinov, held onto her European title in Rome.
Perhaps her biggest achievement, however, was a month earlier in the Paris Diamond League, where Mahuchikh broke Stefka Kostadinova’s long-standing world record of 2.09 meters, set at the 1987 World Athletics Championships in Rome, by clearing 2.10 meters at the Charlety Stadium.
Mahuchikh, a 2019 women’s rising star, is only the second Ukrainian to win European Athlete of the Year, following high jumper Bogdan Bondarenko’s 2013 victory.
On the men’s team, Armand Duplantis of Sweden won the title of men’s European Athlete of the Year for the first time, after sharing it with Jakob Ingebrigtsen in 2022. In 2018, the two also shared the Rising Star trophy.
This year’s finalist list was probably the strongest in award history, with Duplantis joining Olympic 5000m champion and world 3000m record holder Ingebrigtsen and Greece’s Olympic and European long jump champion Miltiadis Tentoglou on the shortlist.
On his way to an undefeated season both indoors and outdoors, Duplantis set world marks of 6.24, 6.25, and 6.26 meters and defended his championships at the World Athletics Indoor Championships, European Athletics Championships, and Olympic Games, making it one of the greatest seasons in sports history.
The eight finest vaults of the season were owned by Duplantis at the end of the summer. In June, he won his third consecutive European outdoor championship in Rome, setting a championship record of 6.10 meters.
