Dina Asher-smith: the best sprinter on the planet?
Last week, “British sprinting entered uncharted territory”, said Ben Bloom in The Sunday Telegraph. At the European Championships in Berlin, Dina Asher-smith triumphed in both the 100 metres and the 200 metres, “destroying everyone who dared stand in her path”. Then, on Sunday night, the 22-year-old from south London rescued the 4x100-metre relay team to secure a third gold medal. The first British runner to win a sprint treble at a major championships, “she is, without a shadow of a doubt, the best sprinter anywhere on the planet right now”. AsherSmith’s British-record times in both the 100m and 200m – 10.85 seconds and 21.89 seconds respectively – were the fastest in the world this year. “She may yet become the first British woman in history to win a global sprint title.” Even as a young girl, Asher-smith “stood out”, said Ron Lewis in The Times. She was spotted by her coach, John Blackie, when she was only nine. As a teenager, she won a world junior title; then came victory in the 200m at the 2016 European Championships and, this year, gold in the 4x100m at the Commonwealth Games. Even when she broke her foot last year, she managed to run in the 200m at the World Championships five months later – and finish fourth. For all of Asher-smith’s hard work and conditioning, she’s also naturally talented: she has an abundance of fast-twitch muscle fibres, which offer the power crucial to sprinting. Between 2008 and 2016, when Usain Bolt lit up athletics, female sprinters were “consigned to the shadows”, said Oliver Brown in The Daily Telegraph. But since he retired last year, the sport has lacked a “worthy contender” to assume his mantle. Asher-smith could be just the person to fill that void: with her wit and “poise”, she is a “marketer’s dream”.
This is a promising time for British athletes, said Riath Al-samarrai in the Daily Mail. With 18 medals – seven of them gold – they topped the medal table in Berlin. Britain’s sprinters dominated – Zharnel Hughes triumphed in the 100m and again as part of the 4x100m team, while Matthew Hudson-smith won the 400m – and Laura Muir became the first British woman to win gold in the 1,500m at a European Championships. But we’ve been here before, said Sean Ingle in The Guardian. Team GB’S athletes did even better at the 2014 European Championships, winning 12 gold medals. Yet they struggled to match that success in the years that followed: at each of the 2015 World Championships and the 2016 Olympics, only four individual athletes won medals. There’s no doubt that AsherSmith is “the real deal”. But for Britain to thrive at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, other athletes “must grab the baton”.