After winning the British title in Manchester the 20-year-old now heads to the National Athletics League on Saturday looking for further improvements

Psychology student Tara Simpson-Sullivan was forced to call on everything she has been learning at Rice University in order to win the British hammer title last weekend.

Finding herself in second place after five rounds, she produced her best in the last round – a 67.38m to deny Jessica Mayho the win at the Manchester Regional Arena.

“Unfortunately, I often leave it to the last throw to get that big one out there,” admitted the Wigan & District athlete.

However, Simpson, who has added more than nine metres to her PB this season with 68.91m, believes her mental fortitude has served her well.

“You just have to trust that you have it in you, no matter where it comes throughout the series,” she said. “I think you have to know that each throw is its own throw and, once you come out of that circle, you have to set yourself up from the get-go to go in again and take everything that’s happened beforehand out of mind.”

Simpson-Sullivan, who was fourth this year at the NCAA Championships – also with a last round-throw – says she is working on hitting it right from round one. However, knowing she has the psychological strength in her amory too can only help.

“One of the big reasons I wanted to study psychology is so I can help better my own performances and hopefully in the future help other people coming up through that important psychological side of athletics. It’s just as important to focus on the mind [as the body] because that’s really half the battle.”

She did not have the best preparation for last weekend’s Olympic trials. Covid rules meant she had to isolate for 10 days after her arrival from the United States, right up until the championships themselves. It meant training was limited to drill work and light maintenance lifting with the few weights she has at her family home.

The 20-year-old hopes to be a little better acclimatised for her next competition, the National Athletics League Premier North match in Manchester on Saturday.

Simpson-Sullivan, who now lies fourth on the UK all-time list, will compete for Wigan, for whom she was a regular in the UK Women’s League until her departure Stateside. She is looking forward to making her debut in the new league.

“I think the national leagues are a great place for development and to get some really good competition,” she said. “This will be my first combined national league with both men and women, but I know a couple of years ago, when it was the UK Women’s League, all the ladies were so supportive and we all had a great team spirit, which is something that I really like and strive for when I’m looking to be part of a team.

“I think, with the other clubs in the [match] I’ll be competing in, we’ll have about eight of the top 20 hammer throwers in the country. Any competition where you have those top three, four, five, six, seven people is always going to be really good for you.”

Simpson-Sullivan seems poised to take on the mantle of Britain’s Olympic hammer bronze medallist Sophie Hitchon, who announced her retirement this year.

The former English Schools champion believes she has made two seasons’ worth of improvement in 2021, after missing competition last summer due to the pandemic.

It brought the Tokyo 2020 standard of 72.50m into focus, although she started out with a PB of just 59.71m.

She said: “[The Olympic standard] was never particularly on the cards, just because the distance was so far but, throughout the season, my PB started to increase and I was like ‘this could become more and more of a possibility’.

“It was just a little too far out of reach, but Paris 2024 is definitely a big goal for me now.”