In celebration of the 2024 Summer Olympics and Paralympics in Paris, GLAMOUR has launched Change The Record, a series dedicated to the women of Team GB, who are flipping the narrative on what it means to be an elite female athlete, from competing on their periods, balancing training with pregnancy and motherhood, navigating body image pressures, and yes, chasing world records.
Here, we chat with Morgan Lake, Team GB’s high jump competitor at this year’s Olympics, about her experiences with body-shaming as an athlete, the gender pay gap and her experience at Paris 2024…
Morgan Lake knows a thing or two about resilience. The Team GB high jumper has competed on the athletics world stage since the age of just 17 – taking the inevitable (and literal) highs and lows in her stride along the way. In fact, it’s the knockbacks that have made her hungrier for success than ever.
“There are times that I’ve looked back at my career and thought about missed opportunities, or I’ll wonder how many medals I could have got by now,” she says when we speak over Zoom just weeks before Paris 2024. “But then, that’s also the thing that keeps me in the sport and so hungry to achieve that.”
She is perhaps referencing her – in her own words – “heartbreaking” retirement from the high jump Olympic finals at Tokyo 2020, after sustaining a foot injury that forced her to withdraw, or her unexpected fourth finish at the World Athletics Indoor Championship in Glasgow in March, where she just missed a medal.
“When that day does come and I do stand on a podium at a global final, it will feel so much sweeter,” she says, with quiet confidence. “It won’t have just happened accidentally. As a kid, you can get a PB every week – or for me, getting junior medals and European junior medals – I probably didn’t fully appreciate those moments. Whereas now… I mean, it’s been 10 years since I was last on a global podium, which is a really long time. But I’m also like, okay, but I’ve learned so much in those 10 years – I can just kind put it towards motivation.”
Sadly, those hopes of an Olympic medal weren’t to be in Paris – Morgan finished a surprise 15th in her qualifying round, meaning she didn’t progress to the high jump finals to compete for a podium. Ever positive, she soon shared her understandable heartbreak on Instagram, before looking ahead to the future.
“No Olympic final for me this time round,” she wrote. “I’m sorry to the people who have supported me all year and I’m so grateful to have made it to 3 Olympics. 10 years of back to back senior championships is something I can be proud of. Not been the season of dreams like last year, but at some point I’m sure it’ll all come back round again. A bit of time needed to reflect.”