'Moving to Texas has made everything exciting again'

Team GB sprinter Dina Asher-Smith tells Lawrence Ostlere that a coaching shake-up and new base is already paying off

- Lawrence Ostlere

After a year spent living her new life in Austin, Texas, Dina Asher-Smith is back in London making up for lost time. She has spent the weeks since a rollercoaster Paris Olympics racing around town seeing family and friends, going out for catch-up coffees and dinners, and even going clubbing.

She calls it her “normal life”, as if athletics is another world, and perhaps this is the part of leaving we never consider: coming back again. It has made her realise how much she missed home.

“I’m definitely a London girl,” she says, speaking from a new house in the capital. Soon she will be summoned back to her training base in Texas. “Obviously the warm weather over there is very appealing, but I like the hustle and bustle, I like getting in a black cab and chatting away to the driver, I love my restaurants, I love seeing my friends. I built a community here.”

She managed to cram in the week-long Indian wedding of her school friend between two impressive performances on the European circuit of the Diamond League. “There was no way that wedding was going to go ahead and I was not going to be there. After I came back from Paris we spent the whole day wedding dress shopping. It was a really good way to bring an end to a season that’s been a lot of change for me.”

Asher-Smith made the bold move to the US last winter, amicably splitting from her long-time coach John Blackie. She joined the stable of highly regarded US trainer Edrick ‘Flo’ Floreal to work alongside a raft of leading sprinters, including the new Olympic 100m champion Julian Alfred.