Dina Asher-Smith powers past Shericka Jackson to win World Indoor Tour final

For British track and field fans there are few sights more thrilling than Dina Asher-Smith going supersonic. It is not just her speed that rips the breath away, it is the economy of movement and sense of imperious power as she glides clear of a world-class field.

No wonder a near sell-out crowd in Birmingham roared as Asher-Smith powered to a British 60m record of 7.03sec in her heat of the World Indoor Tour finals, before leaving world and European champions gasping behind her in winning the final in 7.05.

“I am really happy,” she said, before confessing to having mixed emotions. “But I was actually coming here for a 6.9.”

Yet on an afternoon when Keely Hodgkinson and Neil Gourley also broke national indoor records in the women’s 800m and men’s 1500m, there was a sense of something else, too – that Asher-Smith had vanquished the ghosts of 2022.

Last season she had planned to take on the world, the Commonwealth and Europe in three championships in a whirlwind six weeks. But then life, off the track and on, got in the way.

First she lost her beloved grandmother Sislyn weeks before the world championships. Then she suffered a hamstring injury in the 4x100m relay in Eugene that forced her to miss the Commonwealth Games. To make matters worse, she pulled up with crippling period cramps in the 100m final at the European championships in Munich.“Normally we do well to separate track life and our personal life,” she said. “But sometimes things are so big, you can’t help your response. It was a really challenging year for me, but – and I know this sounds crazy – it was not really physical. It was more as a human being. We’re all humans, we all have the ups and downs of adult life.”In the end, it spoke volumes about Asher-Smith’s