DINA ASHER-SMITH
The new queen of British sport is in the money, but for her it’s all about the medals
THERE’S a picture from 2008 that shows Dina Asher-Smith as a 12-year-old girl, holding Darren Campbell’s Olympic gold medal. It’s charming but there’s a story behind it that goes some way to explaining why she might soon have one of her own.
The tale, as told to Sportsmail, goes that Campbell was doing a round of community visits in London when he was approached by the tiny child in a Nike tracksuit. Naturally enough, she posed with the medal he won for Britain in the 4x100m relay four years earlier. But when Campbell asked if she would like to actually wear it around her neck, Asher-Smith’s mother, Julie, said no, that she could wear one when she won one. You could say mother knows best. A year later, that smiling child ran the 300 metres in 39.16sec, setting a world best for a 13-year-old. A year after that, she was the English Schools Under-15 champion and by 2014, she was the European junior champion for 200m and the world junior gold medallist in the 100m.
What has followed in adulthood is a career of almost constant improvement. In Berlin, she grabbed a golden hat-trick of 100m, 200m and relay. Add those to eight medals across relays and individual sprints, from Olympic bronze in the 4x100m to podium finishes at world, European and Commonwealth level. She is only 22. It really is quite something.
Seb Coe, the IAAF president, talks of a woman who he believes could be a figurehead for the sport. To speak to those around her is to learn about tears in Turkey, history papers in a mess on the living-room floor, a medical marvel, and an athlete whose greatest failings in her 14-year relationship with her coach are limited to race execution errors.
The coach is a good place to start. John Blackie was running the Bees Academy at Blackheath and Bromley Harriers Athletic Club when Julie and Winston Asher-Smith first took their daughter along, aged eight. By then, they had already laughed about the tale of Dina as a toddler, when she outran her uncle at the park one day and charged straight into a pond. It only took one session for Blackie to see why they thought athletics might be a natural fit. ‘She was pretty small,’ Blackie said. ‘But she was one of those you could see straight away had something about her. She just looked springy.’
Together, they started to clean up on the local, regional and national age-group scene. When asked about the feeling of being a coach who finds a rare gem, Blackie simply clenched his fist. It says something about Asher-Smith, and Blackie’s abilities, that all suggestions of swapping to other coaches as she climbed the ranks were firmly swatted back.
‘In all the time we have worked together, there were only two times when I had to lay the law down,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to embarrass her but it is normally about race execution. She has never missed things or turned up late.’
Jo Jennings, the former Commonwealth Games silver medallist high jumper, first met Asher-Smith — then 14 — in her role as development manager for British Athletics. Even then Asher-Smith stood apart. ‘She was always so lovely and helpful to anyone around her but also so
focused,’ Jennings told Sportsmail. ‘As a girl, she just knew what she wanted. I was with her at the European Youth Olympics (in Turkey) in 2011 when she got her first British vest. She falsestarted and was disqualified. I learned something new about her from how devastated she was. When you add that hunger to that kind of talent, you really have something.’ The senior medals flowed. In 2013, she won a world relay bronze. In 2015, she became the fastest British woman ever over 100m and 200m. And in 2016, she won the European 200m title and Olympic relay bronze. ‘Truly a championship performer,’ said Jennings. But it has not been without setbacks. She broke her foot at the start of 2017 and the early expectation was that it would keep her out of a home world championships in the summer. Her physio, Martin Wilson, told Sportsmail: ‘Even if she could somehow come back, she shouldn’t have been competitive with that kind of injury. But what I saw in her over those months was the most incredible mental fortitude I have seen from an athlete.’ A complication was that Asher-Smith was studying for her history finals at King’s College as well as counting down to the British Championships. ‘I’d go to see her and her papers would be all over the floor. She’d get up, go through every single detail of our work, and the minute we finished, she’d be studying again.’
Asher-Smith only returned to running on grass three weeks before the British Championships, where she came sixth in the 200m. Six weeks later, she finished fourth in the Worlds. Wilson added: ‘Anyone who has worked with her didn’t need these European Championships to know what kind of athlete she is. Total drive.’
It has made her the youngest woman ever to run both the 100m in under 10.9sec and the 200m in under 21.9sec, an athlete who could drag the sport up by the spikes in this country and beyond.
Coe has watched with glee in the post-Bolt era. ‘The great thing about Dina is she’s interesting,’ he said. ‘I talked to her a few years ago about her history dissertation and she said: “It’s not something you’d be interested in, but it’s the impact that jazz has had on social integration”. I said: “Well, actually, it is more interesting than athletics”.’
His hope is that she generates the kind of crossover appeal that can help a sport that needs it.
Her hope is that she simply wins stacks of races.
Chances are, from watching her run and listening to those who know her, they might both get their wish.