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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Sport
Exclusive by Sean Ingle

Dina Asher-Smith: ‘You can’t run fast with baggage – you gotta throw it out’

Dina Asher-Smith is aiming to put Olympic pain behind her at the world championships.
Dina Asher-Smith is aiming to put Olympic pain behind her at the world championships. Photograph: Aleksandra Szmigiel/Reuters

“Any time someone mentioned it, I just burst into tears,” says Dina Asher-Smith, with a rawness that stings and lingers. “It was really weird. It was kind of uncontrollable.”

Everyone thinks they know the story of Asher-Smith’s Tokyo Olympics a year ago. How she arrived in Japan as a Team GB poster girl, only to have her dreams of gold eviscerated by a hamstring injury far more serious than she had let on. But on the eve of the world championships in Eugene, Britain’s greatest sprinter bravely reveals that was only the half of it.

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