After a display of icy resolve and sustained power had secured Amy Hunt a European 100m gold medal, Britain’s new sprint queen reached for a Freddie Mercury lyric. “I want it all,” she said, before peering into a golden future.
The Cambridge graduate, 24, now plans to leave the European Championships with four gold medals, adding the 200m and 4x100m women’s and mixed relays to her 100m title. On this evidence, would you dare bet against her?
Hunt is never the quickest starter. In truth, she reacted to the gun like a woman whose spikes had been superglued to her blocks and she was still behind with 30m to go before coming through to take her first major title in 11.00sec.
“I’ve probably had much worse starts than that,” Hunt said. “The biggest thing is not panicking, trusting in my very, very long legs, long femurs, and just staying calm and pulling through at the end.
“‘Trash’ is probably going to be his [her coach, Marco Airale] words about my start,” she said. “And maybe a little bit of Italian blasphemy, but we came through at the end. One of my biggest skills in terms of championships is I know I’m so strong in the end and I always have that kind of extra magic in the last 40, 50m.”
Ewa Swoboda of Poland secured silver in 11.02, while Delphine Nkansa took bronze for Belgium in 11.06.
“Honestly, it’s just euphoria,” said Hunt. “My first gold. I think it was definitely time to upgrade. This was definitely a coming of age for me. I’m someone that thrives under that pressure, so the stage for the final isn’t intimidating to me. I just knew I had to stay calm and not overthink myself into the gold before I had it in my grasp.”
It was also sweet vindication after being beaten into silver at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow a fortnight ago. “It really came in handy for me,” she said. “I wanted to have that experience of being in front of a home crowd and having that meta-expectation, because I’ve never had that before. I took a lot of learnings from Glasgow into today and it really helped me.
Hunt’s story loses little in its retelling. She was the world’s fastest woman over 200m at 18, then had a series of injuries that got so bad some questioned whether she would ever fulfil her potential. A few years ago she ruptured one of her quadriceps so badly that her mum needed to lift her out of the shower.
When she won a 200m silver medal in Tokyo last year, she called herself a “track goddess and an academic badass”. “I don’t know if I have any more one-liners in me,” she said. Then came the Freddie Mercury line.
Hunt later revealed she had a premonition that she was going to win gold. “I just had such a magical feeling,” she said. “I’ve won English Schools here. I’ve raced here as 13-14-year-old. So, this is really my track. I’m a girl from Newark, I’m a Midlands girl. So I just had a feeling that this was going to be my night.”
Hunt insisted that this could be just the start as she now chases an historic four gold medals. “I want to be the best,” she said. “I don’t shy away from that. I train incredibly hard, and I back myself so incredibly hard because I do want to be the best. “I’m not saying that I’m the best right now, but that’s something I aspire to be.”
Hunt said she was so nervous before the race that she was unable to nap. Instead, she was just lay awake in bed with her eyes closed. “But I as soon as I get to the track, my nerves disappear,” she said.
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“I love doing what I do. My coach keeps me really chilled. Megan Thee Stallion [American rapper] kept me kind of nice and upbeat, and you can’t be nervous when you listen to that.”
She also relaxed by playing puzzle games such as Connections, Spelling Bee, Pips and Wordle. “It wakes my brain up without having to overthink.
“Even at training, we’re all competitive every single day about Wordle and how many kind of words we got on Spelling Bee, so it just keeps my brain ticking over, listening to Megan Thee Stallion, house music, a bit of Mamma Mia in there, so just not getting too overly serious.”
Moments before Hunt’s victory there was also a plucky silver for Great Britain’s mixed 4x400m relay team behind the gold medallists Norway.
Britain’s team of Ben Jefferies, Charlotte Henrich, Toby Harries and Yemi Mary John all ran well. But a Norway team spearheaded by the 400m hurdles world record-holder, Karsten Warholm, and the fastest woman in Europe this year, Henriette Jæger, proved too strong as they set a Championship record of 3:09.62, nearly a second clear of Britain.
The only disappointment was that more people were not here to witness it given that the Alexander Stadium, which seats about 20,000, looked barely half full.
However, organisers said 13,623 tickets had been sold for the Monday night – along with 170,000 tickets for the week – and that from Thursday night onwards the event was pretty much a sellout.