We hear how the British high jump champion will be preparing for multiple championships this year, starting with indoor season targets

As Morgan Lake prepared for her second Olympic Games, she took a call from Puma. They wanted her to try their spikes. 

“I saw a picture of them and I was like ‘oh my god, they look perfect’,” says the British high jump champion. “I tried them on, did my first session in them and I was like ‘yup, 100 per cent!’

“That was really nice because spikes are so important [for everyone], but I think for high jump they’re just next level … so for me, as soon as I saw them, tried them on and did a couple of sessions, I thought ‘these are definitely the spikes I want and the brand I want to be with’. It worked really well.”

Lake was so impressed she wore them in Tokyo where she qualified for her second Olympic final. Although, agonisingly, she had to withdraw due to a foot injury, the 24-year-old has been able to reflect with positivity and look ahead with confidence.

“The injury was a huge setback, but it’s almost given me the time to step back and think about exactly what it is that I want, so I’m just really excited for the next steps and looking forward to the 2022 season,” she says.

Commonly described as a child prodigy in her youth, Lake – a multiple national champion in both high jump and heptathlon with a host of age-group records to her name – has made the transition to an accomplished senior without fuss or undue hysteria.

Most notably, she has qualified for two Olympic finals in the high jump, finished sixth in the 2017 World Championships, fourth in the 2018 World Indoor Championships and second at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games in 2018. 

“I think I definitely felt the pressure (as a junior),” she explains. “I felt it more in the heptathlon and I think I put way too much pressure on myself, so I think I organically moved to the high jump because of that; that was always my event where I was just like, ‘I’m good at this, so I’ll just do it for fun’ and, looking back, the reason it went well was because I saw it as fun rather than pressure.

“The biggest advice I’d give [to young athletes] is to enjoy it and don’t put on that self-imposed pressure. Although you feel like everyone is watching what you’re doing, they’re only watching for a very brief time … so I think enjoy yourself and have your own goals, and don’t pin those goals on what you think other people expect from you.”

Lake’s goals for this coming summer include competing at all three major championships. “Going back to Oregon would just be so special – I haven’t been back there since the World Juniors (where she won double gold), so that’s definitely a huge one for me,” she says.

“And also having a home Commonwealth Games, you can’t give up that opportunity. We often train in Birmingham so it’s such a big one, then the European Champs – so I’m going to try my best to do all three of them.”

She adds: “I feel in a great place. After Tokyo and the way I qualified, it’s almost like something just clicked in my brain, I was like, ‘okay, this is how you do it’, which was really nice, then obviously with Puma coming on board as well it feels like everything is coming into place for next year.”

Typical training week (summer)

Lake – double world junior champion in high jump and heptathlon in 2014 – is coached by Fuzz Caan and is based in Loughborough, where she trains with fellow Olympian Emily Borthwick. 

“This is Emily’s first year in Loughborough and we’ve been training together the whole year,” she says. “Before she moved I’d do one session a week with her, but we’ve had a whole winter of training together along with the rest of our group, including [European under-20 bronze medallist] Sam Brereton.

“The group just seems to click really well, and we all just encourage each other to jump even higher.”

A typical training week during the summer includes three double days with technical work (Monday, Wednesday and Friday): “We do something to emulate jumping, but we don’t always jump on all three of these days,” Lake explains.

• Monday: (am) technical. General warm up then high jump-specific drills and body awareness, then either a high jump session or scissors or a box session or springboard; (pm) med ball throws for power and reaction and lifting session in the gym.
• Tuesday: short speed session and circuits. “We still do circuits in the summer season,” says Lake. “Not as big as winter, but to keep us ticking over and our fitness levels high.”
• Wednesday: as Monday.
• Thursday: rest/active recovery, such as walk, yoga, low level bike ride.
• Friday: as Monday.
• Saturday: depends on competitions at this time of year, but similar to Tuesday
• Sunday: complete rest day.

Favourite session

“Definitely the box sessions where we do high jump sessions off the plyo box, so instead of taking off from the ground, we take off from the box. You run up like you would usually, but instead of jumping off the floor you jump off a 10cm box, so it gets you that 10cm higher. It means I can practice going over a 2m bar which is really fun.”

Least favourite session

“Hill sessions (in the winter).”