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British medal hope for the Olympics, high jumper Morgan Lake, has revealed that she hasn’t always loved being tall.
“I was definitely conscious of it when I was young,” says the 5ft 11in athlete. “Especially going through school, a lot of my friends were smaller than me.
“Even now when I’m with Dina [Asher-Smith, the sprinter] and Jaz [Sawyers, long jump] they’re so, so small that I feel self-conscious.”
The 27-year-old added: “But in the high-jump arena I’m one of the shortest high jumpers, which is a really weird place to be. I look at the line-up and I’m like, ‘I’m so short!’ I go from two different worlds of feeling really tall and then feeling small.
“But I definitely love being tall, it definitely helps me in my event. I wish I was a little bit taller.”
Now Lake, who won the British Championships in June – a competition she’s won every year since 2016 – is looking ahead to Paris 2024 with her sights set on a medal and the elusive two-metre height (her personal best is 1.99m) – “I’m so close!” she says.
In 2022 though, she had considered giving up altogether, revealing she had been thinking, “I don’t know if I can do this sport”.
Lake said: “I felt like I just needed a break from the sport, after so many years of just being so close and then not quite getting there. I was like, right, something big needs to change, or this is it.”
And change it did – she took the British Record off heptathlete Katarina Johnson-Thompson with a height of 1.99m last year (“I was like, OK cool, I think I’ll carry on”) following it up with fourth place in the World Championships.
Although it was “really, really tough” to miss out on a medal, “it also showed me that going into this Olympic year, those medals are within reach. It definitely helped my confidence”, she said. “I was like, wow I’ve grown so much.”
Lake is part of a new documentary, Path to Paris: The Hunt for Gold on Channel 4, a partnership with British Athletics and The National Lottery – who fund a lot of elite athletes’ careers – following Team GB stars as they prepare for the 2024 Games.
“It’s a good opportunity to keep athletics in the public eye, and attract people into the sport as well.” Sports like tennis and Formula 1 traditionally get much more coverage, she said, “although athletics is a really big sport as well, I feel like it’s not really shown as much [in terms of] the stories.”
Lake has athletics in her blood. Her dad Eldon Lake is a former triple jumper, and his daughter was touted as a child superstar when, by the age of 11, she’d won a national title. She focused on heptathlon back then, breaking national records all through her teens before specialising in the high jump.
It was a lot to live up to in senior competitions, she said “I did kind of feel that pressure a lot.”
She was the youngest athlete on the track and field team for the Rio Olympics in 2016 – at just 19, Lake became the first woman to make an Olympic high jump final since 1992. She won a silver medal at the 2018 Commonwealth Games, but hasn’t had a major medal since, having to pull out of Tokyo 2020 Olympic final with an injury.
Disappointment is “one of those things that I’ve had a lot of unfortunately”, Lake said, “but I feel like time is a really big healer. Just knowing everything happens for a reason, and being quite persistent definitely helps.
“My main goals as a high jumper and as an athlete are jumping two metres and getting Olympic medals, so every year, even if things don’t quite go to plan, that’s one of the things that keeps me in the sport. Those are my two absolute huge goals, which I will hopefully get to achieve by the end of my career.”
Training for Paris, like any competition, involves jumping at lower heights. “I think the highest I’ve gone in training is just over 1.90m. Before I jumped 1.99m, I was jumping 1.80m or 1.85m in training – it’s crazy the switch you get in competition.
“When you peek in competition and have days off from recovery and the excitement of the event, usually that brings the big heights.”
Realistically, Lake knows she’ll need a personal best to take a medal in Paris – even making the final might take one of her best heights.
“In the Olympics you can’t rule anyone out, everyone’s a competitor, so for me, it’s trying to focus on my own competition, you can’t really control what everyone else does.
“It’s going to take a big height to make the final and to get a medal.”
Away from high jump, she does a lot of hot yoga. “It’s a really nice time to have, an hour where I’m not thinking about anything else and move my body. It’s kind of like meditation.
“It’s not just not thinking about high jump, it’s being the best athlete at all times – sometimes you need to switch off from that.”
National Lottery has invested more than £300 million in grassroot and elite athletes. Path to Paris: The Hunt for Gold, is on Channel 4 on July 20 at 4:55pm.
