Super-quick Dina Asher-Smith is fast becoming a star

Brimful of Asher: Dina Asher-Smith celebrates after winning a silver medal in the 60m at the European Indoors in Prague earlier this year

Dina Asher-Smith’s mouth says one thing, her legs quite another. “I’d be happy to plateau now,” she insists, looking ahead to the coming season after the year of her life on the track.

But speak to anyone at British Athletics and the belief is that 2016 could yet be even better following on from the season in which she marked herself as the fastest British woman of all time with the three sprint records (60metres, 100m and 200m) all sealed in five months.

For all that was achieved, including a European Indoor silver and fifth place in the 200m at the World Championships in Beijing, her goals are still modest, much to the frustration of John Blackie. “My coach says I’m always thinking too small,” is Asher-Smith’s frank assessment just four weeks back into winter training.

So what is the thought process looking ahead to the first Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro four years after she had been a kit carrier for athletes inside the Olympic Stadium at London 2012?

Surely the inference is that another year fitter, wiser and, in theory, faster a medal is there for the taking? “I don’t know,” she says, laughing nervously at the prospect. “I just want to make the Olympic team, that’s the first step you have to take before anything else. You might have medal ambitions and want to be a champion but, if you don’t make the team, then you can’t do anything.”

A medal had looked like a possibility in Beijing having topped the times in qualifying and the semi-finals only for three women to dip under 22 seconds for the first time ever in the final, meaning Asher-Smith missed out on the podium by a 10th of a second.

Having had a chance to reflect, she is adamant there is not any element of frustration. “No, not at all,” she says. “To have got a medal, I would have had to taken 0.6 seconds off by personal best in the course of one season. That’s just not possible. I ran the fastest I could have done, I broke the British record. Of course a medal would have been nice but I was happy, I’m still happy.”

In what is the last month of her teenage years, Asher-Smith needs to prepare herself for the fact that however modest she chooses to set her goals in public, the expectation will have risen from a public desperate for a sprint star — male or female — to take on the world’s best.

But she is happy with the challenge of bettering herself on the track and in every facet of her life. It is less in her blocks and more in her books that she plans to do that having just started the second year of her history at King’s College London. “History has really opened my eyes to things,” she says.

“It makes me better thinking as a historian but also as a person.”

It is with that in mind that there was never any suggestion she would defer her degree by a year to focus on Rio. The 19-year-old even politely scoffs at the suggestion as though the mere consideration is madness. As well as a place with Team GB, this year entails French Revolution, political ideology from Aristotle to Machiavelli and, after the events of last year, befittingly a focus on China. For an avid historian, somewhat surprisingly Asher-Smith does not like to look back on her own track exploits.

She allowed herself to cast an eye on the events of last season while holidaying in Mexico but more to see where and what she can improve. So going into 2016 what is missing? “I’ve got a few things to improve on but I don’t know if that’ll translate into faster times,” she says.

Her trajectory to date would suggest this Olympic year will top anything already achieved even though her mouth says otherwise.

Dina Asher-Smith is shortlisted for the 2015 Sunday Times and Sky Sports Sportswomen of the Year Awards in association with Vitality, celebrating women in sport at all levels. Watch on Sky Sports 1 and Sky 1 tonight from 9.30pm

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