When Nicola Tuthill steps into the hammer cage inside Japan’s National Stadium, a magnificently imposing structure with foundations deep in the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, it might feel like a long way from the family dairy farm just outside of Bandon.
It’s about five years now since her father Norman had the bright idea to build a hammer cage at their home in Cork, facilitating more regular practice for Tuthill while also saving her mother Collette the commute to accompany her daughter to training.
It’s paid dividends already, Tuthill consistency improving in the years since. The 21-year-old has won three championship medals so far in 2025: gold in the European Throwing Cup under-23 event in March, silver at the European Under-23 Championships in July, then silver again at the World University Games a week later.
She’s no stranger either to grand championship arenas having competed at the Paris Olympics in the Stade de France last summer a few weeks after taking to the Stadio Olimpico in Rome for the European Championships.
RM Block
Tuthill is based in Dublin these days, about to start her third year at UCD while part of the Ad Astra scholarship programme, studying secondary school teaching in maths and biology. But she’s left the books at home with all her focus on Sunday’s qualification round (1am Irish time), her recent Irish under-23 record of 71.25 metres potentially up for improvement again.
“I was supposed to start teaching in Dublin on August 20th, and I’m supposed to be back in college now this week,” she says, “but UCD, and the Ad Astra scholarship, they’re really, really accommodating and they helped me through it all, and I’ll just catch up once I’m back.
“I left all the books at home, I didn’t want any distractions. I have to be completely focused on the competition.”
If training at home in Bandon, her only audience would be her two horses.
“The field where I throw is actually where they stay. They’ve kind of learned to stay out of the way at this point, they just kind of know. They see me coming and they head away.
“But with the hammer, sometimes it can be difficult to train in other places. And especially for me, during Covid, it was ideal, because I was in my own backyard and I could train completely normal.”
After throwing her 71.25m to win her fourth national senior title last month, she remains second on the Irish senior all-time list behind national record holder Eileen O’Keeffe, who threw 73.21m in Santry back in 2007 and who finished sixth when that year’s World Championships were staged in Osaka.
Tuthill clearly relishes the competition, and despite being the youngest competitor in the hammer competition she’s is undaunted by the quality around her. In Paris last summer she ended up ranked 16th of the 32, her best throw of 69.90m just short of her lifetime best of 70.32m.
“For me, I’m always looking to do better and I’m always edging for that personal best and to get that bit more out of myself.
“I feel I’m definitely on the world stage now as a senior and I want to obviously perform well and hold my own, which to me, I guess, would be throwing close to my best or kind of staying in around the distance that I’ve been throwing all year.
“I’ll always pick one or two things that I did wrong and then say, ‘okay, how do I fix that?’ Because at the Olympics last year, I threw into the cage, which is a foul, so immediately I only had two more throws. So then you panic for a second, but you’re like, ‘no, hold on a second, this has happened in training before and my next throw is going out straight’.
“I know I’m able to do it, so it’s just kind of a case of drawing on everything you’ve worked on before, just to be able to stay calm on the day.”
There has been an uptick in interest in field events of late, helped by the success of Kate O’Connor in the multi-events, and Tuthill has been taking some inspiration from her Ireland team-mate.
“I think it’s putting field events out there again, because some people think of track and think of running, but there’s actually so much more to offer between jumping and throwing and like Kate, she does them all, which is amazing.”
