Year of progress helps Lorraine Ugen overcome competition jitters ahead of Rio Olympics

Lorraine Ugen has displayed a special amount of mental fortitude to overcome the issues which blighted her early international career.

To be frank, Ugen’s record at junior and under-23 level for Great Britain was poor. Failures to qualify for European and world junior finals in 2009 and 2010 carried over into 2013 where the Thames Valley jumper came up short again in qualification, this time in the European Under-23 Championships and at the World Championships in Moscow – the latter she failed to register a jump.

For the 24-year-old to finally find some regularity in her performances in 2015, a year before the Rio Olympics, could hardly have been timed any better. An early-season leap of 6.96m – albeit with a following 5.8m/sec wind – laid the groundwork for her to open her Diamond League campaign in Doha with a PB of 6.92m.

A fifth-placed finish in Beijing at the World Championships where she hit a second round jump of 6.85m was a sure sign of progress, and the promise was authenticated in March when she leaped to her first international medal at the World Indoors in a British indoor record-equalling 6.93m.

“Last year was my most consistent year. That’s when I realised I could be consistent,” she said. “The year before I’d had one or two good jumps throughout the year and other than that the jumps weren’t great, whereas last year I was able to put world-class jumps together back-to-back at Diamond …

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