Olympic Dreams: Sophie hoping dreams go without a Hitch (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Olympic Dreams: Sophie hoping dreams go without a Hitch

9:00am Saturday 3rd December 2011 in Athletics

London 2012 is just seven months away – and three local stars are ready to impress on the biggest stage. Here ANDY CRYER chats to hammer ace Sophie Hitchon about her dreams and ambitions...

IT was her first taste of the athletics big time and Blackburn Harrier Sophie Hitchon could not help but feel she was a little bit out of place.

The former ballerina had only taken up hammer throwing four years previously but now she was rubbing shoulders with the elite of her sport after a fairy tale rise of non stop success.

Mixing with the likes of British stars Dai Greene and Jessica Ennis and a host of her throwing idols from around the globe proved one step too far for the 20-year-old during August’s World Champion-ships in South Korea.

And there was to be no happy ending for Hitchon as she crashed out in qualifying but, with her first major senior international event now behind her, she is ready to mean business come London 2012.

Hitchon, the British record holder in the hammer, is expected to be an automatic selection for GB’s 2012 Olympics team and she believes the disappointment of Daegu can only stand her in good stead for the challenges ahead.

She said: “At the beginning of last year I didn’t even think I was going to go to the World Championships so just getting there was a massive achievement for me.

“I was just pleased I had got on the team and was able to rub shoulders with Dai Green and Jessica Ennis and all the rest of them. It was all a bit of a shock to me and I was a bit of a tourist.

“I went in the athletes village and saw all these amazing throwers that I have looked up to and you feel you are out of place.

“Now I have been though and got that out of my system. I know I can compete with these girls and hopefully next year I will be up with there with them.”

Hitchon, from Burnley, is already being tipped in some quarters as having a good chance of reaching the Olympic final come next year That should come as no surprise either to anyone who has tracked her fledgling hammer career, having seen her climb to the top of her sport at a remarkable rate.

After breaking the British youth record in her first year in the sport in 2007, she has broken 11 British Junior records and three British Under 23 records on her rise up the ladder as she threw her way to bronze at the European Junior Championships in 2009.

After moving to Loughborough University in February 2010, where she now trains as a full time athlete, she claimed gold in the Junior World Championships and this year has twice broken the British senior record.

“It is difficult not to get carried by all the talk about London 2012 but you just have to get on with training and try to ignore all the hype,” she said.

“It is about getting each training session done and then think about the next one. I don’t like to think about as far ahead as next year.

“Of course though, you can’t help but think about it and me and my coach have thought about it and have plans in place for next year.

“I guess it is a little bit scary if you think about it too much but this is what you prepare for as an athlete all your life.

“The Olympic Games is one of the biggest things you can go to in your life. Sometimes you get nervous but you just have to know you have done the training and done every-thing you can.

“I will be focused and ready to perform my best. The real aim is to get out of qualifying and to get into the final. I want to throw a PB but to just get into the final would be an amazing achievement.”

A product of Ivy Bank School, Hitchon’s hobbies were netball, trampolining and ballet as she was growing up. So how on earth has she ended up throwing the hammer?

She said: “It has been a definite dream since I was young that I wanted to go to the Olympics. What event it was in or what I was going to do I didn’t really know. Even when we won the Olympics I didn’t even know what I wanted to do.

“I had not really started hammer at the time and I didn’t think much about it. I wanted to be there to watch it but I never really thought I would be in the stadium and competing. Now, thinking about it, it is such an amazing achievement that I could even be going next year.

“I started off doing shot and a few other events. We had no one to do hammer for the club at a meeting though, so I had a go and it went from there. My first meet was only 28 metres so it didn’t start well.

“You get points for each event and we had no one to do the hammer, So they just said do it for us and get a point. That was it and I have never looked back. ”