HERE COME THE GIRLS
Asher-Smith and Co lead medal charge
THERE was one particular moment two years ago that summed up how dry the well had become — both in terms of British athletic talent and excuses for when their performances were short of expectations.
The British team had just pulled off something of an escape in the funding sense, having snatched four relay medals in the final weekend of a home world championships to reach a tally of six and limp to the lower end of their UK Sport target of six to eight.
Important business, those targets. For a body that has received £27million in funding for this Olympic cycle, a shortfall of medals in London, of all places, would have had ramifications.
But that was academic after the men’s and women’s 4x100metre and 4x400m relay teams got their podium finishes. Or academic in the strictest sense, anyway, and so it teed up a concourse conversation with the performance director, Neil Black, that in turn was occasionally funny and occasionally desperate.
He said he was fine with critics ‘chatting s***’ about a 78-athlete team that yielded only one individual medallist — Mo Farah took gold in the 10,000m and silver in the 5,000m — and that relay medals ‘are certainly not cheap medals’.
In the metrics of funding, he was right. But in any other environment, it was an argument that could be ripped apart.
For all the money Britain put into the passages of batons — and they are now good at it — relay medals are not the same and never will be.
The relief for Black therefore is that he most likely will not have to rely on such arguments at the upcoming worlds in Doha.
To give him his due, as a man with no shortage of detractors in British athletics circles, he did point strenuously in London to the future contenders coming through.
Ahead of the start of competition on Friday, it would be overstating things to talk of a surge of would-be medallists but Black does have the comfort of having Dina AsherSmith, Laura Muir and Katarina Johnson-Thompson in his 72-strong squad. That trio are the best hopes for putting a dent in the UK Sport target of seven to nine medals.
On Asher-Smith’s shoulders sit the greatest expectations. There is also a feeling that she is best placed to absorb them given she has proven herself to have an exceptional ability to handle pressure since that breakthrough at the European Championships in Berlin last year, where she won 100m, 200m and relay gold medals.
‘She is an athlete I always watch,’ said Noah Lyles, the American expected to be the next star of men’s sprinting who, in Asher-Smith, sees a serious contender for that status in female ranks.
‘You watch her and she brings it for the championships. She doesn’t get fazed. That is scary for anyone to race against.’
The 23-year-old is developing into an athlete with a rare ability to replicate elite-level performances.
She smashed her own British records in running 10.85 seconds and 21.89sec in Germany and, while she has not matched those times since, she has failed to break 11secs for the 100m only once in 2019, and that was into a strong headwind. She closed her preparations for Doha by winning the 100m title in the Diamond League, beating the two-time Olympic champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce.
Ahead of Doha, only Elaine Thompson and Fraser-Pryce (both 10.73sec) have a quicker time than Asher-Smith’s season’s best of 10.88sec, making a first British global sprint medal in 36 years distinctly possible next Sunday.
If it doesn’t come there, then there is an even stronger chance in the 200m, for which she will rank as joint favourite with Thompson for the gold on Wednesday. Black has been talking her up, saying: ‘I think it is possible for her to win medals in all three events (including relay). We all know she’s a very special athlete. The 100 is the biggest challenge but it’s not unrealistic for her to aim for all three.’
Muir, who took fourth in the 1500m in London, goes in as a more unknown quantity. She has not competed since injuring her calf in July but benefits from absent rivals.
The 1500m field is typically the toughest of the lot but Genzebe Dibaba, the world record holder, pulled out injured this week, and Sifan Hassan, the world No1, is undecided about contesting the distance. With Caster Semenya ineligible and Faith Kipyegon lacking race time since maternity leave, it is a gloriously open field.
Johnson-Thompson faces perhaps the greatest obstacle of all in Belgian rival Nafi Thiam, the Olympic heptathlon champion.
For all Johnson-Thompson’s immense strides in the past two years, Thiam has maybe even improved at a better rate.
‘I am happy with the place I am in,’ she said. ‘Thiam is definitely pushing me on.’