Page 4 - BBHAC Winter 2014-15 Gazette web

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merely winning at all costs.
“Well there’s so many things that
makes good technique but at the
end of the day it all comes down to
efficiency” she remarks. “Good
technique is starting well and
getting up really quickly with low
heel recovery from out of the blocks criticise. “When you’ve got 8
ensuring that there is as much power girls running at full pelt into
put into the ground as possible”.
Even if attaining technical
perfection is demanding,
those athletes who can either
replicate it under pressure,
or execute their races as
flawlessly as possible in a high
pressure situation, are the ones
who make potential Olympic
Champions, and to get there
she says “you have to have your
eyes on being technically efficient
and executing your race properly”.
But whilst valuing efficiency
and style she is still aware that
the ability to produce it in high
pressure situations is a key
requirement, and that sooner
or later you may find yourself
in such a situation as a major
championship, where the acid
test of this technical perfection
is your ability to win medals
and breaking records.
She is of course aware of
others who have gone before
and sometimes failed. If this
is in spite of having done all
they can then she is not going
to be judgmental of their
failures and Montell Douglas
is such a case. Having broken
her 100m British record Dina
is mindful of the experience
of the 2008 British sprint
relay team and its tragic
disqualification in the final
of the Olympic 100 metres at
Beijing. Could this have been
avoided or made increasingly
unlikely? It might be she
says, but it’s all very well to
a changing zone... with tens of
thousands of people screaming
vociferously, you’re listening for
one voice to shout out ‘hand’!, and Also I’ve increased the general
8 people doing that at once, you
can imagine that it becomes quite
difficult! Never mind that this is
an olympic final and this is the
defining moment of your career”
From experience she knows
how difficult it is to execute a
relay baton change properly,
despite all the most thorough
training, and the impossibility
of preparing for or even
replicating the tensions in a
scenario such as an Olympic
final. So not only does
she display that technical
understanding required in an
event she says is more skill
than speed, but also reveals a
strong human streak, that of
empathy, realising that we can
all, with the best will in the
world still be fallible in those
pressurised situations.
Does this reveal an element
of human frailty in her
psychological makeup? I
don’t think it does because
often great strengths can
be mistakenly perceived as
weaknesses. After Hengelo
she confessed that she had not
run well and there were lots
of things she could improve
on. And she admitted that she
has needed to focus on areas
of improvement and improve
on weaknesses such as her
general muscle strength in
particular and conditioning.
“What I’ve focused on To get
up to a world class level” she
observes “is to build up your
muscles and get my strength up.
efficiency as to how I run in
order to make sure that you’re
not wasting time or energ y in the
race”. Talent which was once
raw is being constantly honed
and if weaknesses do exist she
would not just ignore them.
But they are not so much
weaknesses as human
tendencies, or what we might
call being normal. Yes she’s
normal to the point of being
approachable and having a
good sense of balance. This is
best illustrated in her choice
of university and studies. She
wanted to have the normal
university experience as
opposed to the cocoon of
going off to college on a
sports scholarship and so
enjoy the social and academic
advantages of the experience
of King’s, London. Aware
of the need to respect her
studies she has aimed to be
like any conscientious student
with a sensible work ethic,
respecting deadlines rather
than ‘literally’ running away
from them.