Flying High: Morgan Lake soars into World final and has eyes on the podium

Sam Mellish for British Athletics

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Morgan Lake soared into the final of the women’s high jump at the World Championships in Tokyo this afternoon (Thursday), comfortably clearing the qualifying mark of 1.92m.

She’ll be joined by 15 other competitors from around the world in Sunday’s final where she’ll hope to push for a place on the podium, having shown solid and consistent form over the course of the summer.

With the help of new coach, Yannick Tregaro, the Windsor, Slough, Eton & Hounslow athlete has been getting closer to the world’s elite jumpers of late, and a few weeks ago cleared 2m for the first time in her career.

In clearing that mark in Zurich, she set a new British record and became the first ever British female to clear 2m.

She is one of only five female athletes to have cleared 2m this season and will go into Sunday’s final with real hope and optimism of winning her first medal for Great Britain at a World Championships.

Lake needed just two jumps to get through qualification for the high jump final in Japan, clearing 1.92m after earlier getting over 1.88m, both at the first attempt.

And following her clearance of two metres at the Diamond League final in Zurich last month, she believes she has never been in such good form, two years on from finishing fourth at the Worlds in Budapest.

She said: “I got two metres only a few weeks ago so that is my current form. I couldn’t ask for anything more.

“So I just want to go out and enjoy it on Sunday and test how high I can jump. It’s the last competition of the season so I just want to give it everything really.”

The conditions at the Tokyo National Stadium had taken a turn for the worse on the sixth day of action at these World Championships, with pouring rain and gusting wind by the time American superstar Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone nearly erased Marita Koch’s 40-year-old 400m world record on her way to gold in the final race of the night.

Luckily for Lake, who is the British captain here, she was in the first group in the high jump and avoided the worst of the conditions.

She said: “I’m happy. All my jumps were in the dry, which was nice, and then I saw the rain coming down and I think they put the bar up to 1.95m in the other pool so we were wondering if we were still going to jump, or would they take 16 through. It was a bit of confusion but I’m safely through, two jumps, very happy.”

Follow all the action from the World Athletics Championships Tokyo 25 on BBC.