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Dina Asher-Smith’s new Texas training base has launched her Olympic ambitions into outer space.
In October, the British sprinter announced she was parting ways with coach John Blackie after 19 years to move across the Atlantic, where she now trains with Edrick Floreal in Austin, a massive change that was as personally significant as it was professional for an athlete who had spent all 27 years of her life living in London.
So far, Asher-Smith’s experience of the American athletic ethos does not feel dissimilar to that of Lone Star State institution NASA, the space agency’s website declaring “we push forward to the moon. Tomorrow, we leap to greater heights.”
Asher-Smith, in action for the first time on Friday alongside Great Britain’s Daryll Neita and Imani-Lara Lansiquot in the 100m heats, said: “I’m so excited for Paris. If I’m being honest, I just feel so different coming into this one than I kind of ever have before.
“Obviously I’m in a new setup, and everything, even from the start of our training this year has been very different, in that we were just so geared towards that final race, the third round, the second round of the Paris Olympic Games.
“I’ve been running great, I’ve put together a string of great performances and still have stuff to work in. So I think I’m in a really exciting position.
“I think they have (in America) a very different mentality. I was having this conversation the other day. I think they’re really, relentlessly optimistic. I think that’s a great thing.
“Obviously I’m very British, so that was a change, but if you were to say, ‘I want to go to the moon,’ they will be like, ‘How can I help you do that?’ and that is mind-blowing.
“But I really think I’ve flourished in that environment, because it’s like, ‘let’s change this, let’s go. And even if we don’t quite make it, if we actually don’t hit the moon, we’re going to be in a really good position because we were on this path’.”
Asher-Smith is set to compete in the individual 100m and 200m sprints as well as the 4x100m relay, in which Great Britain have claimed bronze at the last two Games.
The Americans have been trying to teach Asher-Smith another lesson: that she should not, despite chasing that elusive individual podium in Paris, dismiss the possibility of calling herself an Olympic champion should she win gold with a quartet who bolstered their chances after laying down a world-leading 41.55 seconds at last month’s Diamond League meet.
She said: “I think in Europe there’s a (different) mindset, but actually, yeah. If I’ve won a championship as a relay athlete, I am a world champion.
We absolutely deserve to be called champions— Dina Asher-Smith on European perceptions of the relay
“We absolutely deserve to be called champions. Is it individual? No, but I think it’s as valid, and that’s definitely a new perception for me.”
Asher-Smith held the world 200m title heading into the Tokyo Olympics three years ago, but failed to qualify for the 100m final after placing third in the semis, later withdrawing from the 200m and tearfully revealing that she had torn a hamstring at the British trials that June.
But the momentum is positive headed into these Games and a competition the 28-year-old enters as the reigning European 100m champion, her first major title in five years after her 10.99 was good enough for gold two months ago in Rome.
The women’s sprint podiums are also guaranteed to look different in Paris, where the Rio and Tokyo Olympic 100m and 200m champion Elaine Thompson-Herah will be missing from the start line with an achilles injury.
On Wednesday, Thompson-Herah’s Jamaican compatriot Shericka Jackson, the Tokyo bronze medallist and world 200m champion, announced that she would not compete at 100m, electing to focus all her attention on the longer distance.
That further opens the field for challengers like Asher-Smith, whose training partner Julien Alfred (St Lucia) also poses a threat.
Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, the Tokyo silver medallist, remains in the 100m mix, as does Olympic debutant Sha’Carri Richardson, who was stripped of her spot on the US team three years ago after testing positive for THC, the primary compound found in cannabis.
Richardson is now the reigning 100m world champion, her redemption journey chronicled in the recently-released Netflix documentary Sprint – though the charismatic and expressive 24-year-old, who graced the cover of Vogue before the Games, had already achieved a considerable level of celebrity, even outside athletics circles.
Asher-Smith said: “I think America was definitely overdue a star that crossed over. They’ve got world record holders, they’ve got Olympic medallists, they’ve got some of the finest athletes we’ve seen in the sport for a very long time as a nation, but few of them have crossed over into the American consciousness.
“I think it’s great. It’s a huge market for us, it’s good for the sport, and it’s good to see America have that kind of presence.”
