In celebration of the 2024 Summer season Olympics and Paralympics in Paris, GLAMOUR has launched Change The File, a collection devoted to the ladies of Workforce GB, who’re flipping the narrative on what it means to be an elite feminine athlete, from competing on their intervals, balancing coaching with being pregnant and motherhood, navigating physique picture pressures, and sure, chasing world data.
Right here, we chat with Morgan Lake, Workforce GB’s excessive bounce competitor at this 12 months’s Olympics, about her experiences with body-shaming as an athlete, the gender pay hole and her expertise at Paris 2024…
Morgan Lake is aware of a factor or two about resilience. The Workforce GB excessive jumper has competed on the athletics world stage for the reason that age of simply 17 – taking the inevitable (and literal) highs and lows in her stride alongside the best way. In reality, it is the knockbacks which have made her hungrier for achievement than ever.
“There are occasions that I’ve regarded again at my profession and considered missed alternatives, or I will surprise what number of medals I may have gotten by now,” she says once we converse over Zoom simply weeks earlier than Paris 2024. “However then, that is additionally the factor that retains me within the sport and so hungry to realize that.”
She is probably referencing her – in her personal phrases – “heartbreaking” retirement from the excessive bounce Olympic finals at Tokyo 2020, after sustaining a foot damage that pressured her to withdraw, or her surprising fourth end on the World Athletics Indoor Championship in Glasgow in March, the place she simply missed a medal.
“When that day does come and I do stand on a podium at a worldwide closing, it’s going to really feel a lot sweeter,” she says, with quiet confidence. “It will not have simply occurred by accident. As a child, you may get a PB each week – or for me, getting junior medals and European junior medals – I in all probability did not absolutely respect these moments. Whereas now… I imply, it has been 10 years since I used to be final on a worldwide podium, which is a very very long time. However I am additionally like, okay, however I’ve realized a lot in these 10 years – I can simply sort put it in direction of motivation.”
Sadly, these hopes of an Olympic medal weren’t to be in Paris – Morgan completed a shock fifteenth in her qualifying spherical, that means she did not progress to the excessive bounce finals to compete for a podium. Ever constructive, she quickly shared her comprehensible heartbreak on Instagram, earlier than waiting for the long run.
“No Olympic closing for me this time spherical,” she wrote. “I’m sorry to the individuals who have supported me all 12 months and I’m so grateful to have made it to three Olympics. 10 years of again to again senior championships is one thing I could be happy with. Not been the season of desires like final 12 months, however in some unspecified time in the future I’m certain it’ll all come again spherical once more. A little bit of time wanted to mirror.”
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