Morgan Lake wrote her name in British athletics history after breaking Katarina Johnson-Thompson’s high jump record for her country. At the special high jump tournament in the Czech city of Hustopece, Morgan Lake cleared 1.99m for a new British indoor record and victory.
The previous record was held by heptathlete superstar Katarina Johnson-Thompson, who achieved 1.98m at the Rio 2016 Olympics. Morgan Lake also added 2cm to her personal best, which she set in Hustopece in 2019.
Morgan Lake won the world titles in the girls’ heptathlon and high jump in 2014 and then focused solely on the jump. The athlete, now 25, won silver in the high jump at the 2018 Commonwealth Games.
Morgan Lake is the 2014 World Junior champion in heptathlon and high jump and the 2015 European Junior champion. She broke the 29-year-old UK Under-17 high jump record, clearing 1.90 m in 2013, and broke the 23-year-old UK U20 high jump record with 1.93m in 2014. She also broke the world indoor pentathlon U18 record in 2014, with a score of 4284 points. At the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio, Lake became the first British woman to reach an Olympic high jump final since Debbie Marti in 1992. She is multiple British national champion.
Second in Hustopece was the Ukrainian Iryna Gerashchenko with 1.97 m, and the third with 1.95 m was the representative of Kazakhstan Kristina Ovchinnikova.