sport news Dina Asher-Smith vows to improve after claiming silver medal in European ... trends now
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Three years and counting. There will surely come a time when Dina Asher-Smith resumes her business of winning major races, but for now the baffling drought around Britain’s best-known athlete has extended to a duration no one thought likely.
To say she was a heavy favourite to stop the clock on Friday night would be a huge understatement, in evaluation of her standing against the remainder of the field for the European 200m final.
But as with so much that has happened to her since she won the world title in 2019, great promise was followed by an underwhelming finish. In this instance it meant emerging onto the straight only a fraction behind the notoriously quick starter Mujinga Kambundji of Switzerland, before failing to engage her usual turbo boost on the push to the finish. Where we are used to seeing Asher-Smith swing off the bend like a stone from a sling shot, this time she simply did not respond.
Dina Asher-Smith claimed the silver medal in the European Women's 200m final in Munich
Despite qualifying fastest for the final by a full 0.2sec, and indeed being the only woman of the eight to go beneath 22sec this year, or any other for that matter, she crossed for silver in 22.43sec – a time that smacked of fatigue in a brutally busy summer. Kambundji took gold in 22.32sec, adding to the silver she won in the 100m.
For Asher-Smith, the season can hardly be considered a severe failure when it has included a world bronze for the 200m and a personal best in the 100m. But by
