‘I’m very aware I now have a voice’
New columnist Dina Asher-smith tells Women’s Sports Editor Anna Kessel about on-track glory and using her influence to tackle discrimination
Dina Asher-smith has a voice, and she wants to use it. The 23-yearold sprinter who stormed to three European golds last summer, a first for any British athlete, has had a phenomenal year. Pitch perfect in everything she turned hand – or feet – to, from becoming the fastest woman in the world in 2018 to debuting as a BBC athletics pundit and walking the catwalk at Paris Fashion Week, she was recently named in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list, has graced magazine covers and rubbed shoulders with Britain’s biggest cultural icons, from Stormzy to Naomi Campbell. Her list of accomplishments in a single year is mind-blowing.
More impressive still is that for all the attention, she has not changed a bit. She is the same down-to-earth Dina I met as a relatively unknown teenager, coming in to speak to a group of sports journalism students who needed some interview practice. Afterwards her mother, Julie, sent a note to say thank you for the opportunity, as if the favour had been the other way around.
Six years on and we are huddling in the icy changing rooms of the Norman Park athletics track where Asher-smith has trained, with her coach John Blackie, since she was nine. Cradling tea and coffees served by the track manager from a hatch around the back, we talk about the incredible impact she has had on British sport. She is relaxed, hopping from a discussion about periods and sprint relay uniforms, to sports bras and having a giggle with the photographer about which is her best eyebrow.
Questions were asked last year about Asher-smith’s ability to combine being a cultural icon with the disciplined life necessary for sporting success. But the Londoner – who discreetly slips off her heels under the table at awards shows to “protect her feet” – swiftly put the naysayers to bed.
For as glamorous as Asher-smith’s life looks from the outside – jetting off to Paris last week to star in Nike’s ground-breaking women’s sport launch – at home, in southeast London, she is unchanged, her sixday week training schedule dominating her diary. She is the sort of person who never forgets your name, laughs off the challenge of racing those “men in the street” foolish enough to think they could get anywhere near a woman who holds both British sprint records, and celebrates the off season by ordering Domino’s Pizza in bed, at 11.30am. When the pioneering sportswriter Vikki Orvice died from cancer last month, Asher-smith and her mother made a 140-mile round trip to attend her funeral. As she talks about her vision for her new
Telegraph Sport column, Asher-smith is full of ideas. Studious and wide-ranging in her approach to understanding the world, she is as likely to be reading about the indictments afflicting US politics or an inside view on the NHS, as watching a hilarious meme. “I want to make women’s sport more visible. With a big focus on sports that wouldn’t normally get the limelight. I’m very aware that I have
‘It’s important you give as many opportunities for a different angle of each story to be told’
a voice, and this column, because I’m in track and field. I’d like to give greater visibility to people in sports who don’t get the column space, and I want to tackle some issues within women’s sport.”
It is typical of Asher-smith that she wants to share the space with others. Growing up in Orpington, to parents Julie and Winston, she says her family “overcompensated” for her being an only child. “My mum and dad were always very careful to make sure I wasn’t a ‘me, me, me’ child. I was always heavily encouraged to share.” She was never allowed to win for the sake of it, whether it was putting golf balls into the flower pots in the back garden with her dad, or playing hockey in the street with her mum, if she wanted to win she had to work harder.
“It took me until I was 11 before I beat my uncle Karl at dominoes,” she laughs. “It was never ‘aww little Dina, let her win’, it was, don’t crumble just try harder next time.”
Both parents were sporty, but it was watching role models Kelly Holmes, Denise Lewis and Jessica Ennis-hill that inspired a young Asher-smith into forging a path in athletics. “Well, less so Denise Lewis – I was like five! But I knew about her because I played her game on BBC Sport: tap tap tap tap,” she says, miming the space bar on a keyboard. “I loved it. My mum used to get really annoyed with me bashing the keyboard.” She feels frustrated at the narrow range of sports stories in the media. It doesn’t fit the type of storytelling she would like to do, she says, citing the inspirational tale of Anyika Onuora, who almost died from malaria before going on to win Olympic bronze at the Rio Olympic Games.
Studying history at King’s College London opened Asher-smith’s eyes to the injustices of the world. “It made me appreciate the importance of stories being heard. With history we learnt about bias, lens, schools of thought – that even though someone might say the sky is blue, to 15 different other people writing about it that will be pessimistic, optimistic, a sky blue, a royal blue, a scion blue. It’s very important you give as many people their own voice and as many opportunities for a different angle of each story to be told.”
Her words echo a conversation of our times. Even before Raheem Sterling posted on Instagram about racism in the media, Asher-smith had spoken about the lack of women in the sports media, describing a press conference full of men asking her questions, reflecting on the way that an individual’s agenda informs coverage.
“I don’t think I’m saying anything radical,” she remarks, “it’s something loads of athletes notice and talk about. And actually I’ve talked about representation in the media for years. But I knew that saying it to someone from outside the sports media it might make the article. That’s why recently I’ve done so much fashion stuff and spoken to lots of fashion journalists. What I say hasn’t really changed, it’s just the person writing it.”
She shifts in her seat. “It’s nobody’s fault. You’ve just got to remember that everyone’s coming to the interview with something different that they want to get out of it. I don’t get offended when people drop out the stuff I’m talking about. Some people are there to hear how you’ve performed, and what you need to do to run fast in your next races, that’s what their brief is, and that’s going to be the headline. But if you go to someone else in a different part of the industry, and talk about other things, they’ll latch on. It just depends who’s writing the story, that’s the difference.”
She is curious about everything, and happy to challenge herself. “Questions about femininity and women in sport, that’s something I’ve been grappling with. I want to have gold eye shadow and bright pink lips when I run, but then people look at you and are like, ‘Are you meant to do that as a sportswoman?’ And I’m like, well I’m just being me.” While sports journalists are accustomed to seeing a post-race Ashersmith, “sweaty, but with a nice cat-eye”, she’s found that fashion publications seem shocked that a sportswoman would wear make-up or enjoy clothes.
“It’s the number one question I always get from fashion magazines: do you wear make-up when you compete? I’m like ‘yes’! I’m on TV in front of millions of people, if you do well your picture goes on every front page, every website, Google images for ever. I’m putting on my sparkly eye shadow. But then if you’re Laura Muir, she doesn’t wear a lot of make-up. We’re all women, and we’re all different. Sportswomen are like any other women, a broad spectrum.”
Over the last year she has become part of Britain’s black iconography, gracing the cover of Elle magazine, an issue specially curated by Stormzy alongside model Jourdan Dunn and footballer Wilfried Zaha, and appearing in the video for Black by British rapper Dave, with Sterling and suit designer Ozwald Boateng. The track is a profound and hard-hitting analysis of black identity in 2019: “It’s working twice as hard as the people you know you’re better than,” raps Dave, “cause you need to do double what they do so you can level them.”
“It was an honour to be alongside such inspirational people, and to be thought of in that way,” reflects Asher-smith. “I’m so focused on doing my thing on track that I forget about the power your achievements hold off the track, the potential it has to inspire others.”
In the video she is pictured alongside Dr Anne-marie Imafidon, a computing, mathematics and language child prodigy, and Tiffany Calver, the first woman DJ to host Radio 1’s Rap Show, who has pledged not to tolerate misogynistic lyrics in her playlists. Over the imagery of the three women, Dave raps: “Tell us we used to be barbaric, we had actual queens …”
“They’re trailblazers in their fields,” adds Asher-smith. “Imafidon went to Oxford, got two degrees by the time she was 19 and is doing amazing things in tech and STEM. She is mind-blowing to me. And then Tiffany Calver, who’s currently touring with Drake. To sit next to them both and be described as ‘queens’ was incredible.”
Asher-smith has spoken about what it means to be a young black woman, needing to be more resilient, how others attempt to define your worth. She is confident and serious, but also easy-breezy, when the mood takes her. On The Jonathan Ross
Show, a format in which female guests are easily sidelined, Asher-smith shone with humour and aplomb. When fellow guest and comedian Keith Lemon cracked a joke about Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky being her uncle, Asher-smith smiled, “It would be a surprise, wouldn’t it?” glancing pointedly at her skin. The audience roared with laughter, but Asher-smith was quick to put the joke on her own terms. “Only I can crack that joke,” she quipped. A young woman putting two middle-aged men in their place? It was an impressive debut.
How does she look back on 2018? “It was a year of growth. Since I was 15 I’ve thought about the Japanese proverb
Kaizen, continuous improvement. I was very happy that last year I was able to make lots of improvements in my life. I became far more confident on track.”
After her European triumphs last year, this September Asher-smith will have the chance to compete on a global stage, at the World Championships in Qatar, and before that on the Diamond League circuit, opening her outdoor season in Doha in May. She muses about how much faster she could run with a bit of tailwind, having smashed 10.85sec in Berlin without so much as a breeze. “I hate the question, ‘What do you want to do when you go to the Olympics?’ It’s like asking someone if you buy a lottery ticket do you want to win the lottery? I mean, I didn’t spend my pound to not win, did I?” she laughs.
“Every single woman in that race wants to win. But sometimes you’re not the best on that day. It doesn’t mean you’re bad. It just means that out of how many billion people on the planet, there are only three people better than you. I just try to do my personal best. That’s all I can do.”
Asher-smith’s best has been significantly ahead of the rest of the field. Watching her test her talent against the greatest sprinters in the world this year is going to be a privilege for the rest of us.