Neita and Azu upset favourites to win 100m finals at UK Championships

On a blustery day in Manchester, the established pecking order of British sprinting was blown spectacularly off kilter - with shocks in both the women’s and men’s 100m finals of the national trials.

Dina Asher-Smith has dominated British female sprinting for nearly a decade. But she had no answer as Daryll Neita glided home in a wind-powered 10.8 sec. Asher-Smith made her usual lightning start, but Neita stayed with her and powered away to win by half a metre and 0.03 sec from her rival.

The crowd in Manchester were left even more breathless by the men’s final as the unheralded 21-year-old Jeremiah Azu ran an electric 9.90 sec to take down the reigning European champion Zharnel Hughes and the pre-race favourite Reece Prescod.

The only disappointment was that the raging tailwind in both races - 3.8 m/s for the women and +2.5 m/s for the men - meant that the times were above the legal limit of +2.0 m/s and will not qualify for a national record.

The high wind speed also means that Azu does not have the qualifying time for next month’s world championships in Eugene as his legal personal best of 10.16 is over the qualifying standard.

“All year I’ve been saying it,” said Azu. “I knew I was going to do it, but I still can’t believe it.”

He was not the only one. Most had expected it to be a two-way duel between Hughes and Prescod, who has had a major epiphany since preparing for these championships last year by bingeing on fast food from Deliveroo and enjoying epic Call of Duty sessions. Azu, though, had other ideas.

The European U23 100m champion’s start put Hughes and Prescod both under pressure. And while Prescod nearly caught him, he ran out of track as he came home in 9.94. Hughes was third in 9.97.

The swirling wind made