Dina Asher-Smith snatches victory in thrilling women’s 100m at Birmingham Diamond League

Dina Asher-Smith snatched victory in a thrilling women’s 100m to delight an expectant home crowd at the Birmingham Diamond League.

The world 200m champion came home in 11.10 seconds, prompting a belated outpouring of delight from Great Britain’s sprint queen after such a nail-biting finish at the newly renovated Alexander Stadium, which will host the Commonwealth Games this summer.

In the first major event since its lavish £72m makeover, Asher-Smith delivered a fine performance as the headline athlete in perhaps the strongest event in athletics right now.

While there was still a tinge of disappointment from Jamaican superstar Elaine Thompson-Herah’s late drop-out on Thursday, having felt “discomfort” in training, Asher-Smith added another layer of intrigue to an event with immense interest around the world.

Shericka Jackson, Thompson-Herah’s compatriot and a bronze medallist in Tokyo, was agonisingly denied victory, settling for second and a time just one-hundredth of a second behind Asher-Smith, whose compatriot and Olympic finalist Daryll Neita finished third in 11.14.

“I feel like I’ve progressed,” Asher-Smith said following the victory. “I feel like I’ve worked really hard but if you speak to loads of athletes, loads of people always think they’ve improved. I do believe I have more scope in both 100m and 200m and we’ve worked really hard over the past three years to get that.

“If you think in 2019, I was just a different person, mentally, and in a different position physically. I’ve never been much of a time person because sometimes you can execute a recipe of movements and it’s a mad headwind or it’s freezing cold. I just don’t think it’s ever wise to get bogged down in whether it’s a good time, although I’ll take