A leap of faith: high jumper changes her life and rediscovers her love-By Michael Gleeson Eleanor Patterson on her way to qualifying for the high jump final in Tokyo. Source:Theage Eleanor Patterson gave up high jumping in 2018. She just couldn’t do it anymore. She was deeply unhappy. Jumping, the one thing she loved, no longer gave her any joy. She had won the Commonwealth Games gold medal in Glasgow in 2014 as a crushingly shy 18-year-old schoolgirl from Leongatha. She went to Rio for the Olympics but it didn’t end well. She missed the bar at training heights and went out in the opening round. She cut a lost, despondent figure leaving the field that day. By the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, she had fallen away as an athlete, failed to make the team, and gave the sport away. Yet on Saturday night Patterson will jump for an Olympic medal ...

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