Dina Asher-Smith: Why Britain's Fastest Woman Feels Unaware of Her Achievements (E435)

**Damian Hughes** (0:04)
You are now Britain's fastest woman. You're a world champion. You're an Olympic medalist, 11 medals, eight of them are gold. Dina Asher-Smith, Neeta coming back, but Asher-Smith wins it again. I just want to say, I'm still next to the real life girl, man.
She's the most decorated European athlete in history.

**Dina Asher-Smith** (0:22)
If you want to achieve greatness, it's going to hurt. And when you've only got 10 seconds to do your job, any, even a tenth of a second that's spent thinking about something else, you need to just be focused absolutely on what you're doing. 2022 was a crazy year in my life. It was horrid. I had to do so much psychological work coming into that because the pain, to let go, I was in so much emotional pain. And to let go of that emotional pain, I would have cried. But when you're racing, you can't cry.

**Damian Hughes** (0:53)
Dina Asher-Smith, back on High Performance.

**Dina Asher-Smith** (0:56)
I am. Hi.

**Damian Hughes** (0:57)
This time in person.

**Dina Asher-Smith** (0:59)
Definitely.

**Damian Hughes** (0:59)
It was nice over Zoom. It's even better like this.

**Dina Asher-Smith** (1:02)
Much better like this. That time in Zoom was a crazy time for everyone. So I'm really happy to be here in real life. Good.

**Damian Hughes** (1:07)
Well, this is also a crazy time for you once again, because you now have a place that no athlete in European Championship history has ever occupied before. And we are surrounded by your medals. They're all around us. Here they are. There's about 900 million more medals at your house, your parents house, everywhere else where they live. But you are now Britain's fastest woman. You're a world champion. You're an Olympic medalist. You're the Sunday Time Sportswoman of the year, twice in back to back years in 2018 and again in 2019 And now, after an extraordinary summer in Birmingham, you are the most decorated athlete ever at the European Championships. 11 medals, eight of them are gold. But I think what makes this a very interesting conversation is not where you are now.
It is how you've got to this point and what the future looks like. You're 30 years old, still competing, still at the very top.
But I've really enjoyed for the last few weeks, when we knew we were desperate to have another conversation, looking at the kinds of things that you've been saying, where you're saying there's very little left to prove, yet you still know that there's an Olympic medal that is the kind of gold that you really want. So I think what I'd love to do today is understand what drives a champion when proving yourself is no longer something that you need to do, whether experience removes fear or creates a new kind of fear and what you have to change when the next generation start chasing you down, as we've seen over the last couple of weeks. Does that sound good?

**Dina Asher-Smith** (2:34)
It sounds great.

**Damian Hughes** (2:35)
Should we go on this journey together?

**Dina Asher-Smith** (2:36)
I've done so much research. You know more about myself than I do. So great, thanks.

**Damian Hughes** (2:41)
Interesting for me when I started reading out the list of achievements, you start looking a bit shy and sheepish.

**Dina Asher-Smith** (2:46)
Yeah, I just don't think about the achievements very often. And even when people were doing the medal count for me throughout this season, over the last few years, until people were saying it to me and media or my teammates, I didn't know. I don't know how many medals I've got. I just try my best each time.
I don't necessarily keep count. So it's been a really eye opening period for me in the best and most fabulous way because I think the reason why I've got to this point is because I'm so hyper focused on each individual race each individual year. And even though I've had a lot of great stuff before, I do understand that every time you step on the line, it's a blank sheet of paper and you always have to give your best shot. Like every time you go into training, you've got to try your hardest because that's just the way our sport is. So I think that's for better or worse. I just never think about what's happened in the past. So with that in mind, when other people are being wiser than me sometimes and taking a step back and they're proud of me for a long period of time, I actually had to rejig my mind because I just never look at myself like that. I just stay hyper-focused in the moment. So people were like saying it last week and I was like, yeah, okay, yeah, like 11, 8, it's great, but I want this one now and I want this one now.