THERE are no shortage of signs that Nicola Tuthill is a force that is here to stay. Her performance on the Olympic stage proved that.
Ahead of schedule, the Kilbrittain woman, then 20 years old, qualified for her first Games in Paris last summer, grabbing the chance after her huge personal best (70.32m) in May pushed her dream closer to reality.
Qualification confirmed, Nicola was in bonus territory, but those closest to her know the fierce competitor within. She didn’t travel to Paris to make up the numbers. The three-time Irish senior champion wanted to make an impact – and the youngest of the 32 athletes in action in the women’s hammer showed, again, that we’re dealing with a genuine talent here.
Let’s go to Sunday morning, August 4th, and Nicola’s qualification group. Of the 32 athletes, divided into two groups of 16, the top 12 would qualify for the Olympic final. They all had three throws each in qualification. The pressure was on.
Nicola’s first throw was caught by the net. The pressure increased even more. Now she had only two throws left.
‘My first throw did not go the way I wanted it to; I threw it straight into the net. That was one of my biggest fears, as I really wanted to perform,’ Nicola admits, but she stayed calm in the storm.
Nicola Tuthill impressed in her first Olympic Games.
The Stade de France was heaving. A full house. And Nicola had just two throws left to put her in a position to qualify for the final. She didn’t flinch. Her second throw was a huge 68.87m that settled her down. Nicola’s third and final effort was a monstrous 69.90m, just shy of the 70-metre barrier – it was her joint second farthest throw ever, not that far off her PB.
The Bandon AC prodigy produced the goods on the biggest stage of all and when the pressure was on.
‘After fouling that first throw it was encouraging to compose myself and get the next two away properly,’ she says, comfortable under the Olympic spotlight.
‘It was reminding myself that all the work had been done already so I had to trust the process. To qualify for the Olympics, I travelled abroad to a lot of competitions and competed against a lot of the girls already, so I know them and how I’ve competed against them. So when you are on the big stage, that experience helps you too.’
Nicola looked at home on the grandest of stages, but that’s a constant throughout her short, yet meteoric career to date. Her throwing coach Killian Barry feels her resilience is one of her strongest weapons, explaining that Nicola is able to deal with anything that is thrown at her. Her Paris performance backed that up. She finished 16th in her first Olympics, again encouraging for what the future holds when hammer throwers don’t hit their peak until late 20s/early 30s.
‘I’m 21 now and looking back at the Olympics two girls who made the final were 38 years old,’ Nicola notes.
‘It’s a sport you can compete in as you get older, and all going well I will be in it as long as I can be. You have to take it year by year because you never know what can happen, with injury or whatever. Look at my elbow injury in 2022, it could have changed things for me.
‘All going well, hopefully I’ll be in it for many more years and improving for many more years because typically it’s mid to late 20s where you will be peaking for a throwing sport like this.’
She has achieved so much already, but the best is yet to come from Nicola. The buzz of competing at an Olympics is a feeling she wants again and again and again. To hit those heights, she knows she needs to keep improving, so regularly breaking the 70-metre barrier is on her to-do list.
‘Having experienced an Olympics once, I want to do it all again!’ she smiles.
‘Every competition, you are hungry for more and you always want more out of yourself. Coming back after Paris gave me more motivation and I was bursting to get back to training.’
The Paris memories will endure, though. Special times she was able to share with her parents, her sisters and her friends, as so many supporters made the trip to cheer on Nicola. Team Tuthill was out in force when she was in action.
‘Walking under the stadium and doing all my warm-up and the usual routine, it was just like a regular competition. You can hear the noise but can’t see it. The anticipation builds. The nerves built a little bit too. But you try not to think about the fact that this is the biggest day of your life,’ she recalls.
‘Then when I walked into the stadium, nothing will compare to that crowd, it was jam-packed. It was a morning session and I didn’t expect a crowd that big. When I saw green in every corner, that relaxed me.’
With her first Olympics under her belt, it’s time to move on. It’s the winter training block now as a busy 2025 awaits. The European Athletics U23 Championships in Norway in July will be a target; this is Nicola’s last U23 Euros. There’s the European Throwing Cup in March, the European Athletics Team Championships, the Irish nationals where Nicola will defend her title, and possibly the World Athletics Championship in Tokyo in September ’25.
Her schedule looks packed, but she won’t blink. Just look at her Paris performance. Nicola’s here to stay.
