'Just let the ball run' - Irish hammer throw star Nicola Tuthill eyeing Paris

The Bandon native is close to a shot at the Olympics but is content to play to long game.

CAGE WARRIOR: 20-year-old Bandon native Nicola Tuthill who is attending UCD, pictured at Morton Stadium in Santry. Pic: Ben McShane/Sportsfile

The nervous moments won’t be in the cage. Nicola Tuthill knows what to do once she’s in that concrete throwing circle, holding a 4kg metal ball that hangs from a steel wire.

She’ll set her feet, her back to the direction she’s throwing. Then she’ll start swinging the ball in a large circle, twice over her head before she starts to pirouette along with it, her speed increasing, the momentum building, as she whips a 360 four more times, her arms outstretched, before she finally lets fly.