Amy Hunt’s thoughts is flashing again to the second she unwittingly went viral final September. As untrammelled pleasure charged by her physique, the BBC requested about her uncommon journey from an English diploma at Cambridge to a shock 200m world championship silver medal. Hunt’s response shortly grew to become a cri du coeur to younger ladies in every single place: “You can be an academic badass and a track goddess.”
As the 23-year-old prepares for the World Indoor Championships in Poland that begin on Friday, she reveals her comment was completely spontaneous. “As soon as I said it, I was like: ‘Oh my gosh, I’m on the BBC, can I even say that? Are they going to bleep that out?’” she says, smiling. “I was so incredibly high with the adrenaline and endorphins that there wasn’t that connection between my brain and my mouth, necessarily, so I didn’t really know what I was saying.”
But Hunt’s message struck an instantaneous chord, as a result of she now has sporty 16- and 17-year-olds asking for recommendation on the best way to get into Oxbridge. “There’s so many girls that message me every single day,” she says. “I’ll always say, just give me a call, because the interview is so unlike anything else you’ll ever do.”
Hunt has helped a few ladies fulfil their desires of entering into Cambridge and, in the long run, she desires to arrange a observe and subject equal to Stormzy’s Merky scholarships, which fund tuition and upkeep prices for black college students at Cambridge. For now, although, her focus is solely on becoming “an icon” on the observe over the following decade.
That means making sacrifices, though Hunt doesn’t see it that method. After she received that silver medal, she instantly discovered a number of doorways and extraordinary alternatives opened up for her. But aside from a visit to McLaren’s F1 headquarters and seeing her NFL crew, the Minnesota Vikings, play in London, she turned most of them down for interfering along with her coaching.
“I really hate the term sacrifice,” she says. “People bring it up far too often. This is my job and what I truly love to do. I wake up every day and I am so in love with the life I have created.
“Turning these things down doesn’t really fill me with any sort of sadness. These opportunities – fashion weeks, Oscars, whatever – come around every single year whereas Olympics and Worlds, home European Championships don’t.”
Part of her reasoning comes from understanding how fickle sport may be. At 17, she smashed the world under-18 200m file and was hailed by Vogue as “one of the faces to define the decade”. But when she ruptured a quadriceps so badly whereas at college that her mum wanted to carry her out of the bathe, some thought she was completed. A 4x100m relay silver medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics and silver in Tokyo proved them flawed.
There have been different challenges, particularly on social media . “I had somewhat of a breakthrough when I was 17,” she says. “So I’ve had two peaks in terms of public awareness. Interestingly, I used to get far more – I think paedophiliac is maybe a bit strong – but far more gross or maybe nasty messages when I was much younger.
“I still get a fair few, especially around championships, but it’s more just – I don’t know how I’d put this in a nice way – lustful comments. But I definitely got more of them at age 17, which is very disturbing.”
Hunt stresses that she has discovered to cope with many of the abuse by blocking individuals or turning her telephone off. But she is sensible sufficient to grasp human nature. “People are always going to hate,” she says. “One thing that is maybe controversial to say is that I think athletes should be open to a little bit more hate.
“That sounds horrible, but I mean it in a way that if we want our sport to grow because if we look at all the other sports – football, tennis, F1 – that are huge in public and cultural consciousness, they get a lot more hate and aggression than we do.
“Also, everyone’s entitled to their own opinions. So in the least cocky way possible, my opinion is the only one that matters. I don’t really care what someone online has to say about my starts.”
In a world the place athletes are sometimes inspired to say little Hunt is a welcome antidote. She doesn’t flinch when requested about her ambitions both. This yr she desires to interrupt Dina Asher-Smith’s 100m and 200m British information, win the treble on the European Championships in Birmingham and, in the long run, she desires to be adequate to win medals over 400m.
“All of the sprinting greats are not afraid to put themselves in positions where they’re maybe not the favourite to win,” she says. “I would love to step up to the 400m. I look at people like Allyson Felix who were great across the board and could do every single event and the 4x100m and 4x400m relays.
“In the most selfish, vain way, if you’re the person winning medals in two individual events and two relays and you go home with four Olympic medals then that makes you an icon for life. Truly one of the greats, especially in terms of British athletics.”
How good might she be over 400m? “I definitely have the strength to do it,” she says. “We did a 45-second time trial in South Africa and the results were super good. I ran 368 metres, I think, so we were incredibly happy with that. That stacks up well against 400m specialists.”
For now, although, Hunt’s focus is on Torun. The 60m is too brief a distance for her, given she is 5ft 10in and has an extended stride that takes some time to wind up, but she completed fifth on the world indoors final yr and has run 7.04sec this season, a time that provides her a medal shot.
Whatever occurs, she is relishing the prospect of doing what she does finest: placing it all on the market, win or lose. “I truly love racing,” she says. “I cannot overstate how much I love to stand on that start line. I would do it without even getting paid. It’s my favourite thing in the world.”
