The day before we meet, Dina Asher-Smith had a rare afternoon off. As a world champion athlete at peak physical fitness, opportunities to rest are hard to come by, but rather than spend the day at home, Asher-Smith spent it...axe-throwing.
While she might be a world class sprinter, lobbing an axe at a wall was something she couldn’t get the hang of. Her aim was all wrong, she lost to her friend, but when she tells the story she can’t stop grinning. “I was just so crap,” she says, gently dragging a damp cotton pad across her face after her ES Magazine cover shoot. “And that’s exactly why I loved it. It’s so freeing doing something you’re really bad at.” Other things she’s “crap” at include: go-karting, crazy golf, normal golf. She’s passionate about the latter and plans to join her local club with her father, who taught her how to play in the back garden as a child using flower pots for holes. “I thought it would be a cute daddy-daughter activity,” she says, full of the carefree enthusiasm that comes from being, well, crap at something.
