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Moments after Amy Hunt powered to a stunning world championship 200m silver medal, with a display of staggering bloody-mindedness, she had a message to those intending to follow in her path. “You can be an academic badass and a track goddess,” she insisted. “I’m showing that you can do everything, and anything, you set your mind to. You can be the best at everything.”
But as Hunt, a 23-year-old Cambridge University graduate, told her story it became clear that she has had it anything but easy. A few years ago she ruptured her quadriceps so badly that her mum needed to lift her out of the shower. She struggled with her mental health too, and imposter syndrome. Yet she kept finding a way back.
So when she found herself sixth coming around the bend of a stacked world 200m final, she embraced the challenge. At that stage, the American superstar Melissa Jefferson-Wooden was powering clear to win gold in a world-leading time of 21.68sec. But you could have thrown a blanket over everyone else.
Yet Hunt was gaining. With 50m to go her power and immense fitness drove her past Dina Asher-Smith, the 2019 world champion, who would take fifth. Then Shericka Jackson, winner at the last two worlds, who had to settle for bronze. There was a dip for the line. And then a loud scream Hunt saw the stadium scoreboard showing that she won silver in 22.14.
“My mantra on the start line was ‘no fear’,” she said afterwards. “I knew I just had to be aggressive. I was with them coming off the turn then it was game on. Maybe I’m never going to be the underdog again after getting a medal. But I was just like: ‘It’s time to go hunting.’
Six years ago, Hunt was making waves having broken the world under-18 record. The next year she began her studies at Cambridge. And she was being hailed by Vogue as “one of the faces to define the decade”.
Then her world fell apart. In the first year of university she got ill, didn’t sleep because she drank too much caffeine, and found her mental and physical health deteriorating. Then she ruptured a tendon and needed surgery on her leg.
But she never gave up, even in the lowest points. “I really have that radical utter insane belief in myself,” she said. “And my family really helped me through that and supported me, with lifting me out of the shower and redressing my wounds.”
Even after she recovered she found her tutors at Corpus Christi college weren’t always the most supportive when it came to her athletic pursuits.
“I think Cambridge is an especially unique experience,” she said. “It exists in its own crazy world with so many different random made-up words. And the dining hall is something out of Harry Potter, you’re wearing your robes and the gong sounds and you have to stand up and recite Latin. It’s an entirely different world.
“I considered dropping out at the end of every single year, but I knew that I couldn’t because as you can see I’m not a quitter. I’ll keep fighting until every single centimetre of the track.”
What sustained her? “I think running so fast so young,” she said. “I ran faster than these girls aged 17. I knew I was too talented for it to go to waste. I had a light inside of me that just said it’s worth it. Keep going. You truly have something.”
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The day after she graduated in June 2023 she flew to Padua in Italy to train under Marco Airale. And she has never looked back since. “Failure was never an option for me,” she said. “I knew I would make it, and even before this race I visualised it so many times and to actually finally do it is so incredibly surreal.”
There should be more British medals at these world championships with the Olympic 800m champion Keely Hodgkinson and her training partner, Georgia Hunter-Bell, both qualifying for Sunday’s final.
However Hodgkinson, who is the prohibitive favourite, admitted that she is struggling to cope with the fact that she has to warm up on a track 2.4km away before a 15-minute drive to the National Stadium.
“It doesn’t feel good out there,” she said. “Not really – I think the whole warm up situation, you’re warming up for almost two hours – can be quite draining.”
But this night was all about Hunt, who said she was going to go to karaoke to celebrate. Her song, she told us, is Nelly Furtado’s Maneater. “That’s really boring, but I feel like that was the vibe tonight, just sexy and aggressive.”
There was one last smile. “I’m showing that life can be as rich and as varied as you make it,” she said. “You don’t have to follow one narrow pursuit. You can live a richly developed, textured, and beautifully colourful life.”
And the wonderful news for British athletics’ new hero, is there is plenty more of it to come.
