At the age of seven, she was faster than her teachers. Old friends tell why the
British sprint sensation is a grown-up version of her young selfIt’s hard to pick out detail from the grainy footage, but it’s clear from the commentary that something odd has just happened at the 2009 English Schools’ championships. How on earth have Kent managed to storm into the lead in the 4x100m relay? Were there some irregularities in the baton handover? “I haven’t seen any red flags go up yet,” the commentator says, sceptically. For anyone watching 10 years later, the answer is obvious: the replay shows the first Kent runner handing the baton to a 13-year-old Dina Asher-Smith.
The footage, uploaded to
YouTube by her mother Julie, is probably Asher-Smith’s first TV appearance. She hares down the back straight and gives the baton to her teammate Sophie Ayre, who rounds the final bend in first place. “We immediately had her on second leg as it’s the longest,” Ayre said. “She was so easy to work with in a team and we all had fun practising. I was on third leg so she passed me the baton and we always had a really good change.”