Archery star Pitman has waited long enough for her Olympic dream - so one more year will not faze her

The Brighton athlete was a reserve for the Games four years ago, with a place in Brazil in touching distance right up until the Team GB team took off for South America.

Being left behind brought with it a gutting feeling and it’s those emotions that have taken the 23-year-old to the cusp of a maiden Olympic appearance in Tokyo.

Pitman, alongside Sarah Bettles and Naomi Folkard, was just a couple of weeks away from having her spot confirmed before the Games were pushed back to 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

But when you’ve already waited more than five years for your dream to come true, what’s one more to sit through.

"Tokyo is so exciting. It's everything that I've trained for. I was reserve for the 2016 Games which really spurred me on to make the team for this one,” said Pitman, one of more than 1,100 athletes on UK Sport’s World Class Programme, funded by the National Lottery.

"It's nice to see all the work paying off and getting there – the fact we won the full team quota last summer for the first time in years, it's put us in such a good position as a team to go there with a good medal opportunity as opposed to just being on the plane.

"It's nice to go with an expectation that we can actually do something at this Games.

"We were still trying to get quota places for Rio until just a couple of weeks before the Games, so the hope and opportunity never really went away until the last minute.

"It ended up being really close, and I was so close to going that the initial reaction was feeling that it was a bit of a disaster.

"Watching the Games, watching everyone compete, so much motivation came from that. The disappointment of missing out was a feeling I never wanted to experience again so I made sure that I did everything possible to get us in a better place.

"I had to make sure I was on that plane to Tokyo.”

Sport’s enforced absence has hit Pitman as hard as any athlete, with this the longest time in a decade that she hasn’t trained for or competed in archery events.

But newfound time on her hands has also proved a blessing – notably giving her time to work on the dissertation that makes up her undergraduate degree.

Residing back home in Brighton instead of university in Newcastle, the unexpected rest has also brought with it plenty of positives for Pitman, including a chance to refresh her mindset.

"You can get so wrapped up in sport, every aspect of your life is dominated by it in some way,” said Pitman who, if selected, will look to add to the 864 Olympic and Paralympic medals won since National Lottery funding began in 1997.

“The whole of my education has been planned around training or competitions – you're always worried about exam pressure, so to have all those things taken away and to just purely focus on my studies made things so much simpler.

"But having taken a step back, I think I'm in the best place mentally because I'm more determined than ever to take every chance I can to perform on the world stage and put myself in a great place to compete at the Games next summer.

"The support from the National Lottery and UK Sport has been invaluable.

“In the last couple of years, I've been at university as well, so with that and the amount of time we're away training or at competitions, I haven't been able to get a job.

"So to have that backing and the funding, it takes so much stress and pressure off us as athletes, allowing us to get on with the training, get on with the competing and focus on the performance instead of worrying about how to juggle everything, while affording the sport as well.”

No one does more to support our Olympic and Paralympic athletes than National Lottery players, who raise around £30 million each week for good causes. Discover the positive impact playing The National Lottery has at www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk/stories/track-to-tokyo and #TNLAthletes #TracktoTokyo