Crying shame for Hitchon

IT all ended in tears for Sophie Hitchon. No Rio repeat, no medal, just the red-eyed frustration of not being able to drop the hammer when or where she wanted to. The 26-year-old was well below her best, a distant seventh place in the final after failing in six throws to match the 73.05m she managed in qualifying. Her best effort here was 72.32m, more than two metres short of the medals and down on the 74.54m she threw to win bronze at the Rio Olympics last year. Her face disappeared in her hands when it was over and it is possible to imagine a similar response from the chiefs of this British team, who had banked on the thrower as one of their stronger medal hopes. Instead, she went the way of Katarina Johnson-Thompson, Andrew Pozzi and Holly Bradshaw, who all failed to deliver on their contender status the previous evening. She said: ‘I don’t think anyone else can put as much pressure on me as I do. I am just disappointed I could not pull it out of the bag. ‘I’m definitely capable of more. My coach thinks so and if he thinks so I’m up for trying. ‘I am beating myself up, that’s part of my personality but maybe it just comes out in me a little bit more. But I am really disappointed. ‘I felt like I was in better shape and if I’d have had the rhythm that I’d had in qualification you never know, but it just wasn’t quite there today.’ She started reasonably enough, throwing 71.47m with her first attempt, but by the halfway point had only progressed by 33cm. That left her seventh, before her fourth throw failed to make it out of the cage and her fifth added nothing. Desperately underwhelming. Into the sixth throw and the hope that somehow she might do as she did in Rio, where her final fling of 74.54m jumped her from fifth to third. Here? She needed to improve by three metres but could only advance to 72.32m. Predictably, Poland’s Anita Wlodarczyk, the two-time Olympic champion, was a clear winner. Zheng Wang of China took silver and Poland’s Malwina Kopron won bronze.