Eleanor Patterson (athletics) first soared to prominence when she won gold in the women’s high jump at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games as an 18-year-old, making her Australia’s second youngest able-bodied individual champion in track and field at the Commonwealth Games after Margaret Parker-Koscik. Patterson missed the team – and the chance to defend her title – at the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games but arrived at her second Games in Birmingham in 2022 as reigning world champion having tied the Australian national record of 2.02m just a fortnight earlier in Eugene. It was part of a brilliant podium streak for the Victorian, having won silver at the world indoors in Belgrade earlier in the year, followed by another silver at the Budapest 2023 world outdoors and bronze at the Paris 2024 Olympics.

Patterson took up athletics as a six-year-old, trying the sport after a sleepover at a friend’s place and particularly liking the jumps. She claimed the Australian national junior title in 2011, before going to the Donetsk 2013 World Youth Championships where she won gold. She made her Olympic debut at Rio 2016 but did not qualify for the final. Five years later she finished 5th in Tokyo.

Eleanor hails from Leongatha in Victoria’s South Gippsland region, which also provided another great high jumper, Victoria 1994 Commonwealth Games gold medallist Tim Forsyth.