Ivo Pitts

How did you first get involved in your sport?

I first got involved with athletics around the age of 9 at school because of two incredibly enthusiastic teachers at one of my junior schools, I owe a lot of my successes to them.

I started out as an 800m/cross country runner until the age of 12 until I then got injured with Osgood-schlatter disease. From this I then began to look to other events and over time made the swap to Javelin. From here I was then picked up by my coach.

I had a good few years of strong development, coming 2nd at England u15s in 2017, collecting multiple county champion titles and a few records for club and county, before unfortunately sustaining and elbow injury mid way through the 2019 season. The next few years were challenging with COVID limiting the amount of support I could get and ultimately meaning that I couldn’t get the surgery I needed to get back to training and competition. Over the two years I had out of competitive sport I had more time to focus on my other hobbies, which ultimately lead me here. I am now slowly getting back into full time training again and will return to competition in the summer season 23’.

What is a typical week for you?

I train between 3 and 4 times a week depending on the time of year. In the winter my training sessions are focused on strength+condition and technical work as this is my time to make significant development and changes to my physical and technical abilities for the season to come. In the summer my training changes to be 3 times a week, the training is less intense as competitions are regular and so I can’t afford to be fatigued. This training is more based on technical work and is heavily throws based to optimise competitive ability and improve consistency in performances.

What are your greatest sporting achievements?

Well, my competitive results that I’m most proud of would be winning the 2019 U17 SEAA championships and breaking my club record in a season aimed at being a comeback season after the first niggles of my injury appeared at the beginning of the 2018 season. Along side this, retaining the Sussex county champion title for 5 consecutive years.

More recently, my greatest achievements would be my selection and graduation of the 2019-21 England Athletics Youth Talent Programme as one of roughly 200 1st year U20 athletes across the England, this is the first step of the performance pathway helping athletes to become GB/England international athletes. From here I then secured selection for the 2021-23 England Athletics Junior Talent Programme, as one of 215 athletes selected, considering that my underperformances from the 2021 season I was pleased to be secure this and attain some of the support that I need in order to work my way back up the rankings