Dina Asher-Smith: Britain’s unassuming sprint superstar 

"I love racing. It is exciting mainly because I love Championships, and it is not that I am particularly excited for an outcome - because nobody has a crystal ball, nobody can anticipate what the season is going to be like, what anything is going to be like - but I just love a challenge,” Dina Asher-Smith said in a recent interview with Sky Sports.

And it’s not just talk. Asher-Smith has proven that she can rise to the occasion when the pressure of an international final begins to bubble over.

After winning a bronze medal in the 4x100m final at Rio 2016, she proved her prowess by winning silver in the 100m and gold in the 200m at the Doha 2019 world championships.

In the 100m final, Asher-Smith came home second to the fastest woman alive, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, a rival she may once again come face-to-face with in Tokyo. However, in a world championship race stacked with talent, Asher-Smith also beat the reigning 100 and 200m champion, Elaine Thompson-Herah. No small feat in itself.

In the 200m final, Asher-Smith was in a league of her own. Installed as a favourite prior to the race, she lived up to all expectations - and then some. After winning the race in 21.89 seconds, she became the first female British sprint world champion and proved her status as a big-game player.

The hope of a nation

​​“She won’t like me to say this, but it’s inevitable that she’ll be the poster child for Tokyo,” said World Athletics President Sebastian Coe in a recent interview.

And it’s true. Asher-Smith has transcended her sport to become a cultural icon in Britain. The 25-year-old was even recently featured on the cover of the August digital edition of British Vogue.

However, no matter how much attention gets thrown onto her, she remains a down-to-earth voice for her generation, even shying away from the pitfalls that are so often associated with fame.

As she said in a recent interview with Olympics.com: “It’s very easy sometimes to get caught up in other people’s expectations of you, where other people think you should be, what other people think you should be doing.”

Instead, it is the heat and emotion of competition that truly inspires the sprinter, as well as the opportunity to excite her fans watching from home through the power of sport.

“I think that that’s a really nice position to be in, where you have the opportunity to touch so many people’s lives, to create a moment, and make so many people proud, make so many people feel emotion, make so many people scream at their TVs, cry if it goes well, cry if it doesn’t," she said.

Tokyo 2020 prospects

While season bests of 10.91 seconds in the 100m and 22.06 in the 200 put her ninth overall in both of this year's top list, the times themselves tell far less than the full story.

In May 2021, Asher-Smith won the Diamond League meet in Gateshead, beating a world-class field that included Jamaica's Fraser-Pryce. In June she finished half a second ahead of Côte d'Ivoire's Marie-Josee Ta Lou to win the 200m at the Florence Diamond League.

While a tight hamstring kept her out of the final pre-Olympic Diamond League in Gateshead, Asher-Smith can be confident of one thing: She performs when it matters.

"I am really excited, the thing for me that I always love about sprinting is that it is like an adrenaline rush," she said, talking about Tokyo 2020 to Sky Sports.

"Everybody can be on Instagram and social media like 'hashtag eat, sleep, repeat, I lifted this today, working so hard, hashtag workout Wednesday'. You can do all that, you can say all that, but when it comes down to that, let's see.

"What are you made of? When the gun goes and when you step up, how much nerve do you have? This is the moment, if it is not now, when? That's what I love about racing."

Now with the chance to make history in Tokyo, it's time to find out if Team GB's brightest star can win the greatest prize of them all: An Olympic gold medal.