Eleanor Patterson raises bar as Rio Olympic Games medal hope after IAAF World Challenge win

HIGH-JUMPER Eleanor Patterson has proved she is tracking in the right direction to live up to the hype as Australia’s medal dark horse for Rio.

Eleanor Patterson in action during the Womens High Jump Final. Pic Peter Wallis

ELEANOR Patterson on Saturday night showed she was tracking in the right direction to live up to the hype as Australia’s medal dark horse for Rio.

The Commonwealth high-jump champion was in a league of her own at the IAAF World Challenge event, raising the bar to a career best 1.97m which she narrowly missed.

Patterson, who made the final at last year’s world championships, took victory with a clearance of 1.93m on her third attempt.

“I’m spewing I didn’t get it (personal best) but I’m very close and looking forward to the next jump,” she said.

“My first couple of jumps at 83 and 86 were really good and then stumbled a little bit but just relied on remembering what I could do.”

After some patchy form earlier in the summer, the teenager from Leongatha believes she is getting her groove back ahead of next month’s Olympic trials.

“It is a step in the right direction and I am feeling a lot better about that performance, I have been working really hard,” Patterson said.

Patterson rose to prominence with victory at the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games, her first senior competition.

She admitted the pressure was on ahead of her Olympic debut in Rio.

“It’s a very different dynamic, I haven’t really been in this position in some ways before.

“But it is all the same, they are all the same comps, it’s just remembering that all the hard work has been put in.”

In the women’s pole vault Alana Boyd continued her impressive season, winning with a leap of 4.71m.

It had been an interesting lead-up for Australia’s best pole vaulter given she competed under the impression that New Zealander Eliza McCartney had just stolen her Oceania record.

McCartney cleared 4.80m at the national championship in Dunedin but because there was only two competitors in the event it means the performance is unlikely to be ratified as a record with three competitors required.

That was 3cm more than Boyd’s record which she had set in January on the Sunshine Coast.

In the men’s shot put Geelong’s Damien Birkinhead suffered a leg injury which hampered his performance, throwing 20.16m, to finish second behind New Zealand’s Tom Walsh 20.87m.

The start for the 100m was switched to the back straight at Lakeside Stadium to accommodate the sprinters although it didn’t reap the benefits they hoped.

Queensland’s Aaron Stubbs was well outside the Olympic qualifying standard in the 100m, clocking 10.34 sec although he got confused with the location of the finish line.

“I think it would have been a personal best if I had figured out which line to lunge at,” he said. “There is a line 10 metres out from the finish. I saw the line and I lunged.”

In the women’s 100m hurdles, Michelle Jenneke took advantage of the absence of Olympic champion Sally Pearson, winning in 13.14 sec.

Madeline Hills and Genevieve Lacaze both went under the Olympic A-standard qualifying time in the 3000m steeplechase..

Hills won easily in 9min34.44sec with Lacaze clocking 9:43.93 sec.

Originally published as Eleanor Patterson raises bar as Rio Olympic Games medal hope after IAAF World Challenge win