It is just over a week until the European Athletics Team Championships Super League in Cheboksary, and timing can be everything when it comes to earning selection.
Just as Ukraine’s Krystyna Hryshutyna has demonstrated this week.
Kirovograd is the setting for the national team championships and Hryshutyna has put herself in pole position to book a place in the Ukrainian team by winning the long jump with a personal best of 6.81m, impressively wiping out her old mark by 16 centimetres.
Her performance came in a fine series which included two jumps of 6.75m and one of 6.61m as she beat Anna Yermakov, with 6.61m, and Marharyta Tverdokhlib, with 6.41m.
Hryshutyna, 23, now moves to fifth on this year’s European Athletics rankings where the leading Ukrainian had been Maryna Bekh with 6.63m.
And it is some leap up the lists by Hryshutyna, who rises from 29th after her 6.47m when she finished second in Innsbruck at the end of last month.
As shown last year in the Super League in Braunschweig, the women’s long jump is a highly competitive event, with Germany’s Malaika Mihambo achieving a championship record of 6.90m to take all the points ahead of Eloyse Lesueur, of France, with 6.87m.
Lesueur went on to retain her title at the European Athletics Championships in Zurich, winning with 6.85m, where Serbian Ivana Spanovic took silver with 6.81m - the distance that Hryshutina has now reached with a jump that puts the Ukrainian in with a big chance in Cheboksary next weekend.
At the Olympic Games in London, Ukraine won three medals in athletics, two bronze and the silver from javelin thrower Oleksandr Pyatnytsya who could be in line for Cheboksary after winning at these championships with 79.98m as he beat Mykola Shama with 79.29m. But teammates Maksym Bohdan, with 81.83m from April, Oleksandr Nychyporchuk, with 81.80m, both from last month, do remain above him in the European Athletics rankings.