Amy Hunt on athletics, algorithms and making the grade amid Dina Asher-Smith comparisons

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
Hunt: "I can get stronger, fitter and faster with the Olympics a year away, also older and wiser."
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At times, Amy Hunt might feel she is navigating the seemingly impossible, but hers is a path already trodden very rapidly by Dina Asher-Smith.

For Asher-Smith, 24, it was a history degree at King's College London, followed by global sprint domination at last year's World Championships. For Hunt, next month she will begin reading English at Cambridge University, while tomorrow she bids for the British 100m title.

Hunt appreciates the comparisons are inevitable. She said: "It's crazy. My 13 or 14-year-old self would be freaking out to be in the same sentence as her.

"She's a great role model for the sport and has done an amazing job of putting British sprinters on the map worldwide. She's showed you can do the university degree and be a world-class athlete, and then win world gold two years later.

"It proves to the rest of us we can do the same. It's nice to see people like Dina go beyond sport, and it's amazing to one day line up against her."

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That duel will likely have to wait for another year at a national championships bereft of many of its star names: Asher-Smith is absent, Mo Farah is chasing the hour record in Brussels tomorrow, with Katarina Johnson-Thompson also in the Belgian capital and Laura Muir lining up in Marseille.

Like Asher-Smith, Hunt has already graced the pages of Vogue magazine as one of the figures predicted to shape the next decade but the 18-year-old is far from a household name just yet.

She is, though, the fastest under-18 athlete for the 200m in history, the time clocked last year in only her fifth outdoor race quick enough to have won bronze behind Asher‑Smith at the World Championships in Doha.

Those 22.4 seconds changed everything. "I never dreamed it would be that fast," she said. "And it's strange as the effect was so sudden and abrupt. It was my first doping control and then all the media stuff. I love that and thrive under that pressure."

But that pressure almost became too much. The indoor season followed into early 2020, with the Muller Grand Prix just two days before her mock exams, and Hunt worrying about her lack of revision.

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"That's when it started to become a bit stressful," she said. "It started to get too much, and then lockdown happened. It was from that to nothing, it completely flipped and I had nothing to do. In some ways, it was positive to have a complete pause to my life."

But lockdown had its stresses, the algorithm initially denying her the grades for Cambridge, before she was given her place. "It was a crazy realisation that I'm going to my dream university," she said. "It's such a big milestone."

It is less Asher-Smith and more another British sprinter, Adam Gemili, who made Hunt realise during a long conversation she can juggle her studies and sport.

Gemili managed to make it to the Olympics at London 2012 while studying for his degree, and it remains a similar goal for Hunt.

"It's a big help for me," she said of the Tokyo Games being delayed by 12 months. "It's given us an extra year. I can get stronger, fitter and faster with the Olympics a year away, also older and wiser."

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