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British high jumper Morgan Lake, a medal hopeful at the Olympics, has revealed she has not always liked being tall.
“I was definitely aware of it when I was young,” says the 6’11” athlete. “Especially when I was in 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 are so, so small that I feel self-conscious.”
The 27-year-old added: “But in the high jump I'm one of the shortest jumpers, which is a very strange situation. I look at the line-up and think: 'I'm so short!' I go from two different worlds: I feel very tall and then I feel 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 has won every year since 2016), is looking ahead to Paris 2024 with her sights set on a medal and the elusive height of two metres (her personal best is 1.99m): “I’m so close!” she says.
However, by 2022 she had considered quitting altogether, revealing she had been thinking: “I don't know if I can play this sport.”
Lake said: “I felt like I needed a break from the sport, after so many years of coming so close and then not making it. I thought, well, something big needs to change, or this is it.”
And then she turned things around: last year she took the British record from heptathlete Katarina Johnson-Thompson with a height of 1.99m (“I thought, OK, great, I think I'll keep going”) and then took fourth place at the World Championships.
Although it was “very, very hard” not to be able to get a medal, “it also showed me that, looking ahead to this Olympic year, those medals are within my reach. It definitely helped me gain more confidence,” she said. “I thought: '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 the careers of many elite athletes, which follows the stars of Team GB as they prepare for the 2024 Games.
“It's a good opportunity to keep athletics in the public eye and bring people into the sport as well.” Sports like tennis and Formula 1 traditionally get a lot more coverage, she said, “although athletics is a very big sport as well, I feel like it doesn't really get shown that much.” [in terms of] the stories.”
Lake has athletics in her blood. Her father, Eldon Lake, is a former triple jumper and his daughter was hailed as a child superstar when, aged 11, she won a national title. Back then, she focused on the heptathlon and set national records throughout her teenage years before specialising in the high jump.
“It was a huge challenge to live up to expectations in senior competitions,” she said. “I felt a lot of pressure.”
She was the youngest athlete on the track and field team at the 2016 Rio Olympics – at just 19, Lake became the first woman to reach an Olympic high jump final since 1992. She won a silver medal at the 2018 Commonwealth Games but has not had a major medal since, having to withdraw from the Tokyo 2020 Olympic final through injury.
Disappointment is “one of those things that I've unfortunately had a lot of,” Lake said, “but I feel like time is a great healer. Just knowing that everything happens for a reason and being pretty persistent definitely helps.
“My main goals as a high jumper and as an athlete are to jump two metres and win Olympic medals, so every year, even if things don’t go as planned, that’s one of the things that keeps me in the sport. Those are my two big goals, which I hope 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 ever jumped in training was just over 1.90m. Before I jumped 1.99m, I was jumping 1.80m or 1.85m in training – it's crazy the change that happens in competition.
“When you are in the middle of competition and you have days off to recover and get away from the excitement of the event, that usually brings you great achievements.”
Realistically, Lake knows she will need to achieve a personal best to take home a medal in Paris; even reaching the final could put her in one of her primes.
“At the Olympics you can’t count anyone out, everyone is a competitor, so for me, it’s about trying to focus on my own competition, you can’t really control what other people do.
“It takes a lot of height to reach the final and win a medal.”
In addition to high jumping, she does a lot of hot yoga. “It's a very pleasant time, an hour when I don't think about anything else and I just move my body. It's like a kind of meditation.”
“It’s not just about not thinking about the high jump, it’s about being the best athlete at all times. Sometimes you need to disconnect from that.”
The National Lottery has invested more than £300m in elite and grassroots sports. Path to Paris: The Hunt for Gold will be broadcast on Channel 4 on 20 July at 4.55pm..
