Mutaz Essa Barsham is a Qatari track and field athlete who competes in the high jump and is the current Olympic Champion (2020). He is also the former World Champion and second highest jumper of all-time with a personal best of 2.43. He won gold at the 2017 World Championships in London, at the 2019 World Championships in Doha, as well as the 2022 World Championships in Eugene. At the Olympics, Barsham originally won the full set of medals with bronze at the London 2012 Summer Olympics, silver at the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics, and shared gold at the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics. In 2021, his bronze in the London 2012 Summer Olympics was promoted to silver in a three-way tie for second due to disqualification of the original gold medalist. He was the Asian Indoor and World Junior champion in 2010, and won the high jump gold medals at the 2011 Asian Athletics Championships and 2011 Military World Games. He holds the Asian record in high jump.

The high jump is a track and field event in which competitors must jump unaided over a horizontal bar placed at measured heights without dislodging it. In its modern, most-practiced format, a bar is placed between two standards with a crash mat for landing. Since ancient times, competitors have introduced increasingly effective techniques to arrive at the current form, and the current universally preferred method is the Fosbury Flop, in which athletes run towards the bar and leap head first with their back to the bar.