How they train – Anna Purchase

Insights from the British hammer champion who has been able to use the heartache of missing out on Olympic selection to her benefit

Clichés are often overused, conveniently retrofitted for purpose. At the end of the day. It is what it is. Time will tell. But, sometimes, everything really does happen for a reason.

British hammer champion Anna Purchase moved from the UK to the USA as a teenager, first to study at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, then later transferring to the University of California, Berkeley to be coached by Mo Saatara.

“I like to believe there’s some sort of energy out there in the universe that points you in the right direction,” says the 25-year-old who failed to respond to an initial approach from Saatara and UC Berkeley straight from high school (“I was naïve of the process and the coaching levels,” she says), only to get there eventually via a more unconventional route.

In her first year with Saatara, Purchase finished fourth at the European Under-23 Championships in 2021. In her second year she competed at the Commonwealth Games and senior European Championships and improved her personal best by four metres (to 70.63m at the time, the second British woman to exceed the 70m mark).

She graduated in 2023 with a bachelor’s degree in media studies and a master’s degree in the cultural studies of sports in education, but soon felt the weight of the world on her shoulders.

“The ‘first year out’ is exactly as tough as they say it is,” she says. “I was trying to figure out how to financially support myself, and although I knew I was capable of qualifying [for the Paris Olympics], the pressure of getting the ‘B’ standard plagued me throughout that entire year.”

Purchase had thrown a personal best of 73.02m – inside the 72.36m Olympic ‘B’ standard but outside of the qualifying period – at the Brutus Hamilton Invitational & Multis in April 2023 and backed that up with a 71.47m at the NCAA Championships (division one) in June.

She finished runner-up at the UK Athletics Championships in July and went on to make the final of the World Athletics Championships in Budapest in August, having qualified with her fourth-best throw ever (71.31m); but she struggled to adapt to life post-college as she balanced a minimum wage job with training to make her first Olympics.

Purchase went on to win the 2024 UK title, but her season’s best of 71.79m fell short of the required mark and she…