While her best is 10m from the world record, Hitchon believes hammer throwers peak in their late 20s. Current world record holder Betty Heidler of Germany set the landmark of 79.42m last year at the age of 27, but she did not hit the distances Hitchon has already achieved until the age of 22.
So, to London 2012. To qualify, Hitchon needs to hit the B standard of 69 metres twice this year, an achievement she comfortably accomplished in 2011. But while she is confident, Hitchon is taking nothing for granted, perhaps burned by the biggest disappointment of her career so far.
Hitchon surprised herself by qualifying for last year’s World Championships in Daegu. For someone who describes herself as driven and always wanting to win, it is through gritted teeth that she talks about her 26th-place finish.
“I had been nowhere near the standard, but then we had to think quickly about going to Daegu,” she says. “I didn’t throw well and it wasn’t a good time for me.
“Throwing with the world record holder in the same competition was, like, wow. I was a bit overwhelmed, which didn’t help.
“I was walking around the athletes’ village at the world champs and Usain Bolt walked past and I was like ‘Oh my God’, but you realise you are there to compete at the same championships and it is nice to know.”
You sense that the hurt – and the experience of being at a major tournament – might just spur her on. Next year she has set herself the target of reaching the Olympic final, but ultimately she wants to be the first Briton to win a major medal in the hammer.
Hitchon’s British record would have put her 11th in the Beijing 2008 final, six metres behind the gold medallist, Belarusian Aksana Miankova.
“Looking to [the Olympics] I’m not looking to go and win, but when I sit back and think it is only four years that I’ve been involved in the hammer it is amazing really,” she says.
“If someone said to me in 2007 that in four years you’ll be at a World Championships and British record holder and have travelled the world, I would have just gone, ‘Yeah right, you’re having a laugh.'”
