‘It’s the handiest thing ever. You walk out the back door of the house and you’re here’

KIERAN McCARTHY visited Nicola Tuthill’s family farm to learn more about her home-made throwing circle and cage and discovered how teamwork is making her dream work

*******

NORMAN Tuthill is giving little away – the secret ingredients for the home-made throwing circle he built for his daughter Nicola on their family farm will remain just that.

‘A little bit of this, a little bit of that,’ he smiled, when asked how he found the perfect mix of concrete for the throwing circle. It’s not too smooth or too rough; it’s just right. The evidence is overwhelming – three-time Irish senior women’s hammer champion Nicola, at just 20 years old, has qualified for the Olympic Games in Paris ahead of schedule. 

‘From the start 2028 was always the year we were looking at. For the Los Angeles Olympics, I’d be that bit older,’ Nicola explains. 

‘With the hammer, the girl who finished second at the European Championships (in June) was 38 years old – there are plenty of young people at it, but you don’t have to be young. It’s a sport where you generally tend to get better with time and as you get older. 

‘We had always said 2028 was the most realistic chance to qualify for an Olympics, and after finishing ninth at the Europeans this year we thought getting to Paris would be hard, but possible. 

‘I am very determined, very competitive … we kept competing to see if I could get there, and I did,’ Nicola smiled, and her remarkable rise can be traced back to her home, perched high in Baurleigh in Kilbrittain parish, with a view that stretches for miles. It can be cold up here, especially in the winter, but this is the environment that shaped one of the rising stars of Irish athletics.

GOING STRONG: This is Nicola's current favourite hammer.

From her own, custom-built throwing circle and cage that stands in a field less than a 20-second walk from her two-story, sage green home, Nicola can see West Cork Equine Centre off in the distance – this is where she learned to ride with Carbery Pony Club, and loved it. That grá is still there: Nicola’s two white ponies, Holly (28) who she has had for ten years, and the slightly bigger Polo (23), the bossier of the two, share the field with her throwing cage. They’ve played their part in this story, too. 

Middle child Nicola and her two sisters, Olivia (22) and Aoife (18), are farmer’s daughters, and not afraid of hard work. Even though training and her studies in University College Dublin have taken over, Nicola rolls up her sleeves on the dairy farm when she can. In the winter she helps her dad Norman with the milking at night. Last summer when they were building a lane, Nicola drove a tractor and trailer, drawing stones. She’s hands-on, resilient, loves being outdoors and walking down the yard to help, and now puts that can-do attitude and raw, agricultural strength to use when she steps inside the throwing cage. 

‘I’ve always said I would have been stronger from the ponies, I was carrying buckets of water up and down the field, and all that, so it started me off early,’ Nicola explains.

‘I love horse-riding,’ she adds, ‘but as I was getting older, I had to pick and I preferred the hammer – I couldn't risk falling off a horse and being out injured for a few weeks. I’d still go for a hack, but I wouldn’t be half as daring as I used to be because I’d be too afraid of injuring myself.’

Nicola nailed her choice of sport, just like she nailed her huge new personal best of 70.32m – the first time she threw over 70 metres in competition – at the P-T-S Meeting in Slovakia in late May. That catapulted the Bandon Athletic Club star into her first senior European Athletics Championships in June, and her head-turning ninth-place finish in Rome boosted her chances of qualifying for Paris. 

When the qualification window for the Olympics closed on June 30th, Nicola was inside the quota. The excitement was on hold. It was a wait then for the updated World Athletics rankings on the following Tuesday – Nicola was down the yard on the farm, clipping Holly when her mom Colette rang from the house to say she was within the quota. Nicola darted up home, promising Holly she would finish the job later. Paris, here I come.

***

Nicola jokes that the field that’s home to her throwing circle and cage, and Holly and Polo, is hers because she’s the one who has destroyed it with hammers ranging in weights up to six kilogrammes arrowing through the air and pummelling the ground. 

The field stretches from around 100 metres, from the top where the circle and cage have been built, down towards the road with various markers in the ground for distance. This field runs beside the driveway which was Nicola’s second starting point in her younger days; at the very start, she did throw a plastic hammer up and down the lawn right outside the house. Then as her throws from the driveway into the field grew faster and longer, a new plan was hatched in 2019. Time to graduate to the field.

CONCRETE PLANS: Norman Tuthill working on the throwing circle in 2019, as Nicola watches on.

‘I was training in the town park in Bandon where there was a cage,’ she explains, ‘my sisters would be in the car trying to do their homework while I was throwing. If a hammer got stuck at the top of the cage you'd have to go searching for a ladder, mom was out training me, and it was all taking a really long time.’

Nicola was studying for her Junior Cert exams in Coláiste na Toirbhirte in Bandon, too, and struggling to fit everything in. She floated the idea of building a throwing circle and cage in the field that Nicola overlooks from her bedroom window, the sill lined with various trophies she’s snaffled up in her rise from the town park in Bandon to the Olympics in Paris. 

Her mom and dad got to work. Colette googled plans online, and Norman – with the help of Danny O’Regan from Schull, who works on the farm, and neighbour Barry Ahern – turned the dream into reality.

‘It’s the handiest thing ever,’ Nicola beams. ‘You walk out the back door of the house and you’re here.’

It’s her very own field of dreams, a hedge separating it from the house. The throwing circle was built first, with Norman’s secret recipe for the concrete, as well as making sure it was the right dimension. It’s a challenge he accepted. 

‘They concreted the poles into the ground so they wouldn’t blow away because we live on the top of the hill. It’s not the best for shade!’ Nicola laughs. 

A gate, on its left, was added to the cage. It was Danny who got his hands on some fishing netting from Schull to complete the look. There have been running repairs since 2019, the natural wear and tear of a throwing cage. A new section of a green, sturdier fishing net, also from Schull, was needed, and the plan is to eventually replace the original netting all around. This is where the magic starts, with Nicola’s parents supporting her every step of this journey, from when she first tried the hammer throw at an athletics camp all the way to the Stade de France for her first Olympics.

***

If you want to know why Nicola doesn’t think anything of hard work, it can be traced back to her parents, Norman and Colette.

If Nicola’s hands control the four-kilogramme hammer she uses in competition better than other women in Ireland right now, then her dad’s hands chiselled from farm work have the knack of providing the tools she needs. As well as the throwing circle and cage, his fingerprints are everywhere.

NIGHT SHIFT: It was all hands on deck to build Nicola's throwing cage in 2019.

In the garage beside the house Norman has built a weights station complete with a pull-up bar where Nicola can work out. In a corner near the door, where all her hammers hang, including her favourite four-kilogramme that she uses in competition as well as her very first hammer too, stands a home-made hammer trolley Norman built – it’s for Nicola to collect her hammers after she fires off several, one after another. 

‘My parents are so good to me,’ she says.

‘If I wrap a hammer around the cage, dad will bring up the loader, hoist me up to get the hammer out, then take the hammer down the yard and straighten it for me. 

‘Any time I am throwing, mom is there. Always. My coach Killian (Barry) tells me what to work on, and mom is there watching, keeping an eye on what I have to work on. She is learning with me. She’ll walk the field with me then to collect the hammers – in the winter the field is knee-high water and dirt because it’s wet, so muddy, but mom is always there to help.’

Nicola appreciates the support of the incredible team around her, her parents and family, her coaches Killian Barry (throws) and Roland Korom (gym), and her first coach Kevin Warner who put her on this road, her home club Bandon AC, her college UCD where she studies science and is on an Ad Astra scholarship, and everyone who has played a part in her story so far.

***

Nicola was just 16 years old when she won the Irish senior women’s hammer title in 2020. That turned heads. And they haven’t stopped turning since; the 2020 West Cork Youth Sports Star Award winner is now a three-time national senior champion. Those familiar with Irish athletics have been aware that this special talent was on rise, and it was her performance at the 2024 European Athletics Championships in Rome, her first major international competition, that introduced her to the Irish public. 

Her best effort of 69.85m in the qualifying group booked her place in the final. There, her longest throw of 69.09m helped Nicola finish ninth in Europe. Since then she has thrown 69.90m at Cork City Sports, agonisingly close to that 70-metre barrier, again. 

Her throws coach, Killian Barry, feels Nicola has all the components needed to be a top hammer thrower – her technique is impressive, and her strength and power development has steadily progressed too. There’s a reason he’s excited to work with Nicola, he sees the potential. Only 20 years old, just one Irish woman has ever thrown further than Nicola: national record holder Eileen O’Keeffe who threw 73.21 in 2007. 

Nicola has now become just the second Irish women’s hammer thrower to qualify for an Olympics, O’Keeffe the first in 2008. Everything is trending upwards for the Kilbrittain woman, especially considering hammer throwers peak in their late 20s and early 30s.

ON THE BIG STAGE: Nicola Tuthill in action at the 2024 European Championships.

‘It’s working on the technique,’ Nicola says is key to achieving consistency.

‘I would be a technical thrower, so it’s speed, power, technique. You have to have all those. One tiny wrong move and the hammer could end up in the net. Having a good technique is a strong base and then it’s about getting stronger in the gym, and piecing it all together.’

Throwing beyond 70 metres consistently is a target, and will be a base to build on as she moves forward, but first, it’s her maiden Olympics in Paris. 

Her smile at the mention of Paris highlights her excitement for the adventure ahead. 

‘I can’t wait for the whole experience. Paris is all brand new to me right now … I want to do my best and be proud of myself out there. It’s a massive achievement for me to be there, I am only 20 and for the startlist for the hammer I will be the youngest, so if I can perform close to my best I’ll be happy.’

Nicola is ahead of schedule, but a morning spent with her at home in Baurleigh is an insight into the work ethic that has led to her first Olympics. Norman and Colette embrace hard work, and that’s rubbed off on their daughters. The same morning we visited, Aoife was out training on the local roads, Norman was up and down to the farm, and Colette was knitting it all together.

‘I have worked really really hard for this. I am always working and am very determined to keep going. I want to do the best I can in everything I do. That helps. No matter how tired I am, I’m not going to skip a session.’

Those countless training sessions on her own throwing circle and cage have brought Nicola to here. The Tuthill teamwork is making Nicola’s dream work.