High jump at the Olympics

High jump at the Olympic Games
The 1904 high jump competition
Overview
Sport	Athletics
Gender	Men and women
Years held	Men: 1896–2024 Women: 1928–2024
Olympic record
Men	2.39 m Charles Austin (1996)
Women	2.06 m Yelena Slesarenko (2004)
Reigning champion
Men	Hamish Kerr (NZL)
Women	Yaroslava Mahuchikh (UKR)

The high jump at the Summer Olympics is grouped among the four track and field jumping events held at the multi-sport event. The men's high jump has been present on the Olympic athletics programme since the first Summer Olympics in 1896. The women's high jump was one of five events to feature on the first women's athletics programme in 1928, and it was the only jumping event available to women until 1948, when the long jump was permitted.

The Olympic records for the event are 2.39 m (7 ft 10 in) for men, set by Charles Austin in 1996, and 2.06 m (6 ft 9 in) for women, set by Yelena Slesarenko in 2004. Gerd Wessig is the only man to have set a world record in the Olympic high jump, having done so in 1980 with a mark of 2.36 m (7 ft 8+3⁄4 in). The women's world record has been broken on three occasions at the Olympics, with records coming in 1928, 1932 and 1972.^[1]

Ellery Clark was the first Olympic champion in 1896 and Ethel Catherwood became the first female Olympic high jump champion 32 years later. Following the 2020 Olympics, Gianmarco Tamberi from Italy and Mutaz Essa Barshim from Qatar are the reigning men's Olympic champions and Yaroslava Mahuchikh from Ukraine is the reigning women's Olympic champion. Only two athletes have won two Olympic high jump titles, both women: Iolanda Balaș and Ulrike Meyfarth.

A standing high jump variant of the event was contested from 1900 to 1912 and standing jumps specialist Ray Ewry won all but one of the gold medals in its brief history.