Ava Hutchinson represented Ireland in the women’s marathon at the 2012 London Olympic Games.

A member of Dundrum South Dublin AC, Hutchinson qualified for the Games by running 2:35:33 at the Houston Marathon in January 2012 – only her second career marathon – comfortably inside the A-standard and enough for fourth place in a high-quality field.

She attended Providence College in the United States on a scholarship, where she was coached by Ray Treacy and was named Horizon League Cross Country Athlete of the Year in 2006. She later based herself at Loughborough University in England. She won the Irish national cross country title in February 2011 and the national half-marathon title later that year on her debut at the distance. She twice competed at the World Cross Country Championships for Ireland. In the same year as her Olympic debut she was part of the Irish team that won gold at the 2012 European Cross Country Championships in Budapest, alongside Fionnuala Britton, Linda Byrne, Lizzie Lee, Sara Treacy and Sarah McCormack.