HALL Tom

Olympic qualifying results
He was part of the British men's recurve team that sealed a quota spot for Great Britain ahead of the 2020 Olympic Games through their performance at the 2019 World Championships in 's-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands. (bbc.co.uk, 12 Jun 2019)

General
LATE STARTER
He did not take up archery until he was age 20, and initially got involved in the sport as something to do in his spare time. "It's not too long ago when I was doing UK tournaments for fun and this was just my hobby. I never intended to be here and this was never a career plan for me - I just picked it up at university. Archery just caught my eye at the sports fair and I thought, 'I'll give it a go!'. I never expected to be here and if you think too much about it, it's a little bit crazy." (romseyadvertiser.co.uk, 06 Oct 2019)

SPORT AND STUDIES
He completed a PhD in chemistry in 2018, which he combined with representing Great Britain in international archery competitions. "I had to accept not having control sometimes. Especially with lab work, an experiment that was meant to take two hours could sometimes take six. It did mean the occasional late shift working into the evening, which could get pretty frustrating. I tried to reframe it as a choice I made rather than something forced on me. I had to be flexible enough to rearrange training for the rest of the week, or even write it off on the worst days. To compensate, I did try to keep some training sessions 'sacred', and do them in the morning before any lab work." (archerygb.org, 30 Oct 2020)