Dina Asher-Smith’s journey from South London teen to world’s No1 sprinter
AMID the ear-splitting din inside London’s Olympic stadium, 16-year-old kit carrier Dina Asher-Smith watched in awe as Team GB triumphed again and again and again.
Dina, now 23, remembers: “I saw people in the stand crying when Jess Ennis-Hill and Mo Farah won gold. It made me realise what sport means to the country. I thought, ‘I want to give people that feeling’.”
On Wednesday evening, Asher the Dasher again ignited that national pride as she won 200-metres gold at the World Championships in Doha, Qatar — becoming the first British woman ever to land a major global sprint title.
Put more simply, she is the fastest British woman in recorded history. Afterwards, Dina crumpled into her mum Julie’s arms as tears flowed and the touching images of the weeping champ became an internet sensation.
She had written her place in history as the first Brit to win a world or Olympic sprint title since Linford Christie at the World Championships in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1993.
Normally chatty Dina was choked as she said: “I have dreamt of this and now it’s real.”
She is a marketing dream. A glamorous style icon, who discreetly takes off her heels under the table at awards shows to “protect her feet”, she has sashayed down the catwalk at Paris Fashion Week.
Dina also has a first-class degree in history from King’s College London, where she juggled studies with a training regime of four hours a day, six days a week.
She prepared for this week’s World Championships — where she also won 100-metres silver — while also doing a course in political philosophy.
At school she got ten A* GCSEs and three As at A level.
Yet despite all the success, she remains down-to-earth. In the off-season break from her training she orders takeaway pizza in bed at 11.30am. So what was the making of track queen Dina?
Geraldina Rachel Asher-Smith was born in December 1995 to Julie, a human resources boss, and Winston, a mechanical engineer, in Orpington, South East London. An only child, the family argue from which side she inherits her fleet feet.
She says: “My mum and dad both like to say they were responsible, so it’s kind of political. My dad is from Jamaica and used to run in school but he’s pretty vague about it. Meanwhile my mum used to play hockey and run the 800 metres for her club, so my parents sort of argue over it.
“Neither of them sprinted at club level, though, so it was a shock that I was so fast. My uncle has claims, too, and so does my grandma.”
Dina knew her future from an early age. At just eight years old she drew a picture of herself and scrawled underneath it: “I want to win the Olympics.”
At Perry Hall Primary School in Orpington, teacher Mandy Papadopoulos says Dina’s remarkable talent was already clear.
She recalls: “I remember having her in my team on sports day and she was amazing. We were a few points behind and needed to win the last race — and who was in that last leg of the relay? Dina. She flew like the wind and left many of us speechless. What a finish!”
Dina was keen on history and geography and Mandy remembers her as, “a kind, polite and popular girl with a great sense of humour”.
Mum Julie, who played hockey competitively until she was 30, encouraged Dina do cross-country at school in return for an ice-cream.
Aged eight, she joined her local athletics club, Blackheath and Bromley Harriers, and linked up with coach John Blackie — who she calls her “second dad”.
She says: “John is like family to me. He is a humble and kind person and I love him to bits.”
When Dina was 12 she met British Olympic sprinter Darren Campbell — who won 200-metres silver at Sydney 2000 and 100-metres relay gold at Athens 2004 — and he asked her if she wanted to try on one of his medals. But her mother told Darren: “No, the first one she will try on will be her own.”
Success soon followed. Aged 13, Dina set a 300-metres junior world record. Aged 20 she came fifth in the 200 metres at the Rio 2016 Olympics and the next year she was fourth in the same event at the World Championships in London.
Last year she won three sprint golds at the European Championships — before this week bagging gold in Doha in a British record of 21.88 seconds. A strict diet sees her give up wine, bread and sweets in the run-up to big races. But in the off season she relaxes.
Dina says: “I’ll have pizza for breakfast, McDonald’s and brownies, wine or whatever. Eleven months of the year I have nothing to get excited about except maybe eating an apple. I’m going to enjoy it.”
It is a regime that has been spectacularly successful. But she also makes sure to look good when she takes her place in the starting blocks at the start of a race. Dina, who has landed sponsorship deals with brands including Nike and luxury watchmaker Hublot, always makes sure to wear eyeshadow when she competes.
She says: “It’s the number one question I get from fashion magazines, ‘Do you wear make-up when you compete?’ I’m, like, ‘Yes!’ I’m on TV in front of millions. If you do well, your picture goes on every front page, every website — Google images for ever. I’m putting on my sparkly eyeshadow.”
Rapper Stormzy asked her to be part of a magazine shoot for iconic young black Britons and she has also been on The Jonathan Ross Show. Currently thought to be single, she split from British sprinter Zharnel Hughes last year.
At the time, she joked: “We are friends. I am not a celebrity, which is why it’s hilarious that people care if I have a boyfriend.” Now she wants to use her growing fame in a positive way.
She says: “I feel we have a bit to do in encouraging more women to go into sports journalism. I often sit in front of a room at a press conference that is over-whelmingly full of men asking me questions.
“I want to see more women on sports desks because it will change the way women are portrayed in the media. Often, what I would call over-sexualised images of sportswomen are used, and also perhaps more focus is on the women who are deemed pretty, as opposed to talented.”
When The Sun’s pioneering sports writer Vikki Orvice died from cancer this year, Dina and her mum made a 140-mile round trip to attend her funeral.
Dina is equally forth-right about the benefits to girls of taking part in plenty of sport. She says: “I think much more emphasis should be put on sport for girls at school, but not about winning, more about good mental health.
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“There are so many transferable skills with sport. It gives you self-confidence, helps to relieve anxiety and is healthy for young women. Winning isn’t everything in sport, which may sound odd coming from an Olympian.”
Indeed, Dina will now go into the Tokyo Olympics next summer with a huge burden of expectation on her shoulders.
But that does not phase her one bit. She says: “I’m a confident person, I can handle performing in front of a huge crowd under intense pressure. I’m fortunate I can do that, it’s how I am wired. You do not realise what you can handle until you have to handle it.”
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