Dina Asher-Smith has endured her fair share of pain this season with a gruelling recovery from a broken foot but the agony of missing out on 200m bronze by seven hundredths of a second should not cloud the scale of her comeback.
The 21-year-old would surely have won her first global senior medal had her season not been decimated by a fractured navicular bone in February. But she lowered her season’s best by half a second to finish fourth in 22.22sec as the Dutchwoman Dafne Schippers defended her title. In another couple of steps Asher-Smith would have run down Shaunae Miller-Uibo, the Bahamian. And with another couple of months’ training under her belt, who knows what might have transpired.
“I was coming down the home straight thinking, ‘Oh my god, I didn’t know I was in this sort of shape’ but then to see I missed out on bronze by seven hundredths of a second is gutting,” said Asher-Smith. “In sprinting terms that’s quite a lot but not when you’ve broken your foot. I’m quite frustrated but on reflection I’m pleased to have run a 22.2 on very little training.”
Rain started to fall just as the women entered the London Stadium and Asher-Smith got a characteristically flying start, rounding the bend in third. Miller-Uibo, who suffered a Devon Loch style collapse metres from the line in the 400m final, pulled ahead but Asher-Smith began to claw back the ground.
“I didn’t even have placings in my mind in the blocks,” said Asher-Smith, who broke her foot in a freak training accident and spent six weeks on crutches. “I know it sounds so silly but I was honestly just so happy to be here. The crowd were getting louder and louder when I was coming down the home straight and I thought ‘That probably means it’s going quite well, so just keep going.’ It’s my best finish ever in a world final but so close.”
Asher-Smith is the fifth British athlete to have finished fourth in these championships, more than any other nation. Callum Hawkins, Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake, Kyle Langford and Laura Muir are the others to have suffered medal near misses. It means Great Britain languish equal 13th in the medal table, with only Mo Farah’s 10,000m gold to fill the cabinet, but Asher-Smith sounded an optimistic note.
“We’ve had a lot of fourth places but most of those have been by people who are so young who probably have another decade in them,” she said. “They might not have got a medal now but they’re definitely going to be ones to watch in the years to come.”
Alongside recovering from injury, Asher-Smith completed her history degree at King’s College London, graduating last month with a 2:1. She paid tribute to her team, especially her coach, John Blackie, afterwards. “They’ve believed in me every step of the way and I honestly wouldn’t have been able to bang out a 22.22 if it wasn’t for them,” she said.
Schippers never looked like relinquishing her title, crossing the line in 22.06. Marie-Josie Ta Lou of the Ivory Coast took silver in a national record 22.08 with Miller-Uibo’s time 22.15.
“It is very special,” said Schippers. “I fought for it and worked very hard this season and chased everything, I had to dip on the finish line because it was difficult to see where Ta Lou was from two lanes away. There were so many Dutch fans in the stadium, all wearing orange. To do it two times in a row is brilliant.”
