After a year spent living her new life in Austin, Texas, Dina Asher-Smith is back in London making up for lost time. She has spent the weeks since a rollercoaster Paris Olympics racing around town seeing family and friends, going out for catch-up coffees and dinners, and even going clubbing.
She calls it her “normal life”, as if athletics is another world, and perhaps this is the part of leaving we never consider: coming back again. It has made her realise how much she missed home.
“I’m definitely a London girl,” she says, speaking from a new house in the capital. Soon she will be summoned back to her training base in Texas. “Obviously the warm weather over there is very appealing, but I like the hustle and bustle, I like getting in a black cab and chatting away to the driver, I love my restaurants, I love seeing my friends. I built a community here.”
She managed to cram in the week-long Indian wedding of her school friend between two impressive performances on the European circuit of the Diamond League.
“There was no way that wedding was going to go ahead and I was not going to be there. After I came back from Paris we spent the whole day wedding dress shopping. It was a really good way to bring an end to a season that’s been a lot of change for me.”
Asher-Smith made the bold move to the US last winter, amicably splitting from her long-time coach John Blackie. She joined the stable of highly regarded US trainer Edrick ‘Flo’ Floreal to work alongside a raft of leading sprinters, including the new Olympic 100m champion Julien Alfred.
The decision has been vindicated. Although her tearful 100m semi-final elimination may have been a lasting image of her Olympics, it was hardly a fair depiction of her season. She bounced back to finish an agonising fourth in the 200m final and win silver in the 4x100m, in a summer which began with 100m gold at the European Championships and ended with fast times in the Diamond League.
After spending the year immersing herself in fresh ideas, surrounded by impossibly high standards, Asher-Smith has breathed new life into her career, staying fit and running as fast as ever.
“I’m really excited by running in track and field right now, which I think I do owe to a shake-up in environment,” she says. “There was absolutely nothing wrong with where I was in London – I absolutely love my previous coach, John, he’s like a second dad. It’s just sometimes change is mentally good and stimulating. It’s brought a new perspective and it’s made everything really exciting again.
“It’s having new reference points, and people with a new eye looking at you and going, ‘Oh, you can do that, crazy’, and I’ve just taken it for granted and been like, that’s normal for me.”
I made a mistake, and then I corrected it, and went and did really well in the last three Diamond Leagues
Asher-Smith on her Olympic 100m exit
It is the first time in her life Asher-Smith has lived anywhere else for a sustained period and she is, she admits, a fish out of water in Austin.
“It’s really, really hot. I wake up every day and the first thing in my head is to make sure I’m hydrating. I know if I haven’t set up my day drinking water, drinking my electrolytes from the moment I’m up, training is not going to go well…
“Just being able to experience a different way of life is really stimulating. They love their barbecues, love their tacos. The biggest change is the thing that they do for relaxing, which is chilling by the pool with their friends,” she laughs, “which is nice for me as well.”
She has taken an interest in the upcoming US election, while managing to avoid any sticky conversations. “Austin is a liberal city anyway,” she smiles. “I find it interesting because I did a history degree so that’s the kind of stuff I look into, but people don’t talk about it at all. It’s not like the UK where everybody’s got an opinion. Maybe if I was in New York or LA it’d be different, but you wouldn’t know, trust me. It’s wild.”
Asher-Smith is speaking two months on from the Olympics and life has been busy ever since – she has just finished filming an Amazon short-film with fellow British record holder Zharnel Hughes in which “we had so much fun, it was just a big laugh”. She has made an effort to quickly move past and learn from the Olympic 100m competition, an event with which she has a tortured relationship. Twice it has ended at the semi-final stage in tears: in Tokyo due to a niggling injury, and in Paris after what she calls a mistake in her mental approach.
“I made a mistake, and then I corrected it, and went and did really well in the last three Diamond Leagues. Sometimes it’s just about the attitude and energy you bring to the start line. Different emotional moods work for different people. When you’re in a new coaching set-up this is stuff that you figure out along the way.
“Nobody in this life, including athletes, are perfect. But all you can do when that happens is just to learn from it and not make the same mistake and keep it moving.”
Those Diamond League performances – running 10.88, 10.89 and 10.92 – proved that Paris was behind her, as she knocked on the door of her British record, 10.83. In those races she took the fight to new sprint queen Alfred, as well as America’s Sha’Carri Richardson.
Ahead of the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo next year, there is a sense that a fully fit Asher-Smith can challenge for individual global titles, six years after she became the 200m world champion in Doha. Ultimately, it is why she left her London comfort zone. And in 2025, her new surroundings might feel a little more comfortable.
“I’m really excited to attack the Worlds, to get back into a training cycle again on a programme that I know works for me, and works for my body, which is the biggest thing you’re scared of when you make a change. I’m looking forward to attacking that in the second year, when I just understand it and what’s coming, and when everything’s not new.”
Dina Asher-Smith and fellow Team GB teammate Zharnel Hughes have been helping Amazon make even faster deliveries ahead of Prime Big Deal Days, a two-day deals event on the 8th and 9th October. To watch them in action visit www.instagram.com/amazonuk/