Aussies Eleanor Patterson, Ash Moloney medal at World Athletics Indoor Championships

Australia's athletics team is celebrating a double medal success at the world indoor championships in Belgrade with high jumper Eleanor Patterson soaring to silver and Ash Moloney battling to heptathlon bronze.

The pair both set national and Oceanian indoor records as they opened the 15-strong team's medal account on Saturday in the first world indoors competition to be staged for four years.

Patterson set the ball rolling in the morning session as she soared over the landmark 2-metres mark for the first time in her distinguished career to also add 1 centimetre to her own Commonwealth record.

Yet eventually she lost out in a duel for gold with Ukraine's Yaroslava Mahuchikh (2.02m) in a final that left the entire Belgrade Arena high on emotion as the 20-year-old victor had been forced to flee her war-torn homeland and endure a 2,000-kilometre car journey just to reach Serbia.

«It felt like a special competition out there,» explained 25-year-old Patterson, unconcerned that she'd looked like striking gold until a last-gasp clearance at 2.00m from Mahuchikh.

«The hardships the Ukrainian athletes have gone through, no-one deserves to go through.

»The journey they've gone on just to get here is incredible. I'm incredibly proud of Yaroslava and what's she's been able to do here — amazing."

In the evening, Moloney — the exciting young multi-eventer — kept battling through the pain barrier to complete a gruelling 1,000-metres race in the last of the seven events and added the heptathlon bronze to his Olympic decathlon bronze he won in Tokyo last year.

It was another precocious effort from the 22-year-old Queenslander, who had never had a single competition indoors before and was concerned about aggravating a knee injury which had forced