Golden Girl: Who is Dina Asher-Smith?

"I know it sounds terrible, but in the first two steps of the 100-meter race, I knew I was the champion," Dina Asher-Smith said after her 100-200 double at the 2018 European Athletics Championships in Berlin. She then added: "The only thing that scared me was the possibility of doing badly in the wedges. Since I was better in the 200 meters, I would finish better than everyone else. When I did well, there was no question mark in my mind."

Geraldina "Dina" Rachel Asher-Smith (born 4 December 1995) is a British sprinter internationally active since 2011. In 2019 she was the first British woman to win a World title in a sprint event.

In addition to the 100 meters, she also completed the 200 meters and 4x100 meters by winning gold medals. No matter how you look at it, this was a mini Usain Bolt, Veronica Campbell-Brown, or Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce performance. But Dina Asher-Smith, who returned from Berlin with three gold medals and became the first female British athlete to run the year's best time in the world and do a double in the 100 and 200 meters in the history of the European championships, is unlike any of the 'superstar sprinters' we have seen in recent years.

British athletics led by Mo Farah in the men's category and Jessica Ennis-Hill in the women's category; Farah's move to road racing fell into a huge gap with the retirement of Ennis Hill. The fact that Katarina Johnson Thompson, who was especially admired since the age of 18-19, could not rise to that level and that the Chijindu Ujah-Adam Gemili duo did not emerge as a star sprinter showed that the British press and the athletics world had set their expectations on the wrong people. Laura Muir, who not only broke the country records in the middle distance last season but also completed the 1500-3000 meter double at the European Athletics Indoor Championships, had, in layman's terms, taken the country by storm. However, her lack of media and scandal tended to hinder her desire to reach a new athlete that the classic British sports media could flatter without limit. The media gods still wanted a sprinter.

Although, in the classic expression "I'm coming!" Even though she had a youth career, Britain learned about her very late indeed. Dina Asher-Smith stood out as a sprinter who had run the 100 and 200 very well since the junior level and focused on the 200. At the age of 19, she became the first British female athlete to run 100 meters in under 11 seconds; She was the youngest Briton to medal in the 60, 100, and 200 metres, and she capped her early career with a European 200 meter title at the age of 20. Despite all this, her name became known and became famous only after she received three gold medals in Berlin in 2018. She came under the spotlight with the gold medals she won, especially by running the best times of the year in the 100 and 200 races.

Since then, Britain has only just gotten to know him, and in retrospect, that's a good thing indeed. Considering that British media pressure and the expectations the sporting world places on young athletes have ruined many careers, Asher-Smith's exposure to media attention not as a 20-year-old young talent but as a 22-year-old double European Champion sprinter was also detrimental to her mental health. Good. The late arrival of interest also enabled her to mature mentally in another respect.

In fact, there is a very important season that she has survived in her short career now, which also shows her mental strength. Just one season before 2018, when she broke out... While she was preparing for the 2017 World Athletics Championships to be held at home in London as the European champion of the previous season, it is not easy for a young athlete to break her foot in February and suddenly have to stop all her preparations. It wasn't something that could be overcome.

Her physiotherapist Martin Wilson, who worked with her throughout her injury, said: "After the fracture she suffered in February, it was not possible for her to compete, let alone be competitive, at the World Championships held in the summer. However, she came fourth in the 200 meters and was on the team that won the silver medal in the 4x100 meters. She is among the athletes I have worked with for years." "She is the person with the greatest mental strength and dedication. What she did is definitely not a surprise," he says. This is perhaps the biggest example that Asher-Smith has the mental strength, which is the most important thing needed to achieve a medal after talent and training are combined...

As she says, Dina Asher-Smith is following in Jessica Ennis-Hill's footsteps. She is aware that she can be a role model like him. With both her career and her life... While her goal of world and Olympic championships is waiting in the wings, she is aware that she is not as out of sight as before. Even though she is now more aware of the expectations and pressure on him, she is ready for this. She is not bothered by media attention, but she does not make it the center of her life. Her family, and even her education at King's College, where she was accepted after passing her exams with an A in 2017, are as important as her athletics career and goals. The fact that she has never changed despite all the success has incredibly impressed her coach John Blackie: "He is as excited as the first day her parents Julie and Winston brought her to the athletics club, she is as punctual and works as hard as when she decided to do this job. It is impossible not to be proud of her because any "I don't think I've ever seen an athlete achieve so much in one season and stay the same."