Dina Asher-Smith said she was an “if-not-now-when kind of girl” as she explained the way she thinks, during a Zoom call in Tokyo. It summed her up. Beneath the bubbly exterior she is impatient. She has been moving towards this moment since she was fifth in her first race after a friend’s ice-cream bribe. When told she can’t do something, she insists she can. “My motto would literally be ‘f*** it’, ” she once told Elle.
The “if” and “it” girl for British athletics, Asher-Smith, 25, is trying to do something extraordinary. England’s football team were supposedly looking at ending 55 years of hurt this month, but no British woman has won a 100m or 200m Olympic medal for 61 years. The last was
