It’s haul gone wrong
TEAM GB END WITH JUST FIVE MEDALS AFTER ROPEY RELAYS
DINA ASHER-SMITH pledged that success would not change her as she flew home with a fistful of medals.
Rather than paint the town red after becoming the first Briton to win three medals at a single world championships, she has decided to paint her kitchen purple.
“I’ve been taking pictures of the coffee shop at the hotel,” said the sprint sensation.
“I want to make the kitchen in my flat look like it, with the blue and the purple.”
Asher-Smith was installed by Seb Coe as the poster girl for next year’s Tokyo Olympics even before adding relay silver on Saturday night to her 200m gold and 100m silver.
Few will argue with the choice of the IAAF president given the way Asher-Smith, 23, backed up her triple gold medal-winning performance at last year’s European Championships. Already second-favourite behind the cricketer Ben Stokes for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award, Asher-Smith is going to be in high demand in the nine months between now and flying to Japan.
But she vowed: “I will keep being me. I have mixed emotions about my profile going up. I am not one to be like, ‘Look at me’. I am not that kind of person.
“It is one of the things I’ve had to get used to, the extra attention, people wanting selfies when I am warming up.
“But that is not why I came into the sport. I like to run and I want to keep doing that and having fun.
“Keep being me on the track. That means eyeliner, lipsticks, scrunchies, smiling and being clumsy.” Asher-Smith paid tribute to her 4x100m relay team-mates Asha Philip, Ashleigh Nelson and Daryll Neita, without whom her third medal of the championships would not have been possible.
The trio are all experienced athletes who will keep their friend grounded, and AsherSmith is savvy enough to know that if she gets distracted from her day job, the trappings that come with fame will quickly melt away.
The British team were relieved to have her contribution towards their tally of five medals, or else they would have got nowhere near the minimum target of seven, set by UK Sport.
Captain Richard Kilty said the team can now confidently expect to pick up “10 to 12” medals at the Olympics.
“That’s got to be the target,” he said. “That’s not being ambitious.”