Australia’s new world champion: Eleanor Patterson wins high jump gold | mickgleeson
Australia has a new world champion. Eleanor Patterson has won gold with an inspiring performance that delivered Australia’s first high jump medal at a world championships, becoming just the 10th Australian athlete to win a world track and field title.
On her third and last effort she cleared the bar. That kept her in the fight for medals with three other women. Her two misses at 1.98m, however, meant that she was sitting in fourth place. The bar was put to 2.02m and Patterson cleared it at her first attempt. That matched the national and Oceania record and, more importantly, vaulted her to the gold medal place after all of her rivals missed the height at their first attempts. Two, Italy’s Elena Vallortigara and Ukraine’s Iryna Gerashchenko, missed in their attempts and were eliminated. Vallortigara took bronze.