Eleanor Patterson


Eleanor Patterson is an Australian track and field athlete who competes in the high jump. She has a personal best of for the event. She is the joint holder of the world youth best and the outright holder of the Oceanian junior record and the Australian record. She was the gold medallist at the 2014 Commonwealth Games and the 2013 World Youth Championships in Athletics

Career

Born in Leongatha, Victoria, Patterson began competing in the high jump as a child. She competed in local events from the age of six and continued on with the Little Athletics programme. She was runner-up at the national junior championships in 2011, setting a personal best of at the age of fourteen. She returned the following year to win that title and improved to that November.
In her first international competition she won the gold medal at the 2013 World Youth Championships in Athletics, setting a personal best of to win by a margin of six centimetres. In December she broke records at the Australian Schools Championships, clearing a height of to equal the world youth best held by Charmaine Gale-Weavers and Olga Turchak and set a new Oceanian junior record. The 17-year-old had three attempts at the Australian senior record of, but had three failures.
Patterson was regularly over 1.90 m in the 2014 season, winning a fourth straight Australian junior title and taking her first senior national title at the Australian Athletics Championships. She also won at the Melbourne Track Classic meet with a jump of. She decided to miss the 2014 World Junior Championships in Athletics in order to represent Australia at the 2014 Commonwealth Games instead. The move paid off as she jumped to win the gold medal ahead of England's Isobel Pooley. This made the 18-year-old the third youngest Australian Commonwealth Games champion ever.
Patterson didn't make the 2018 Commonwealth Games squad, took a year off the sport, before returning and qualifying for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
In 2020 she set a new Australian record, jumping 1.99m in New Zealand.