BIRMINGHAM — Just before the European Athletics Championships got under way in Birmingham, Amy Hunt cited a song from ‘High School Musical’ to capture her goals for the event: “I want it all”.
She meant four gold medals: in the 100m and 200m along with the 4x100m and 4x400m relays.
On the first night of action at Alexander Stadium on Monday, the 24-year-old took her first big step towards that goal – and a giant leap forward in her career.
Hunt kept her calm, held her form and came from behind to power to the first major championship title of her career, clocking 11.00 seconds to deny Poland’s Ewa Swoboda (11.02).
Amy Hunt is European champion! The 24-year-old wins gold in the women’s 100m in a time of exactly 11 seconds pic.twitter.com/7ds8x0NQPb
— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) August 10, 2026As she beamed a bright smile a while later, the Cambridge University graduate in English literature admitted that she had “such a big premonition” that she would win gold in a stadium she knew so well, having competed here for over a decade, stretching back to her days as a teen sprint prodigy.
“I just had a magical feeling,” she said. “I’ve won English Schools here, raced here as a 13, 14-year-old. I’m a Midlands girl. I had a feeling this was going to be my night.”
Hunt’s journey to becoming the sprint queen of Europe was a rocky one. In 2019, she set a world Under-18 record of 22.42 for 200m and won the European Under-20 title, igniting hopes that she’d be the next big thing in British athletics, with the Olympics website calling her “the most exciting young sprinter on the planet”.
She enrolled at Cambridge the following year, but her athletic progress stalled there, with Hunt pushing herself to breaking point in her first year to keep up with academic demands. Illness disrupted her season in 2021 while in 2022, she ruptured her quadriceps, which resulted in surgery and a move back into the family home as she recovered and regained mobility.
Amy Hunt delivered Britain’s first gold of the European Athletics Championships (Photo: Getty)After graduating from Cambridge in 2023, Hunt parted ways with longtime coach Joe McDonnell and moved to Padua, Italy to work with Marco Airale. She began to see improvements within weeks, setting a 100m personal best of 11.13 later that summer.
In 2024, Hunt helped the British women’s 4x100m team to gold in the European final in Rome and was part of the 4x100m team that won silver at the Paris Olympics.
Last year, she claimed a superb 200m silver medal at the World Championships in Tokyo, where she reflected on the long road to the top level and offered advice to those who hoped to follow her path. “You can be an academic badass and a track goddess,” she said. “I’m showing that you can do everything, and anything, you set your mind to. You can be the best at everything.”
She described Cambridge as an “especially unique experience”, adding that it “exists in its own crazy world with so many different random made-up words”. Hunt said she considered dropping out at the end of every year but that she is “not a quitter” but someone who will “keep fighting every single centimetre of the track”.
In Birmingham on Monday night, she showed immense composure to stay relaxed in the 100m final despite a mediocre first half that left her with a metre to find.
Hunt only led for the last five metres of the race after a slow start (Photo: Getty)“My coach will probably say it was trash,” she said. “We came through in the end. That’s one of my biggest skills in championships: I know I have that extra magic in the last 40.”
She had gone to the line as favourite to deliver gold for an expectant home crowd and while her coach had prescribed a 20-minute nap in the afternoon, Hunt was far too excited to sleep, lying in bed with her eyes closed. She passed part of the day playing brain games like Spelling Bee and Wordle. “It wakes my brain up without having to overthink,” she said.
If there was a disappointing note to the evening, it’s that the stands were half-empty as Hunt powered down the track to win gold, with many fans online citing high ticket costs. Still, there was a thunderous roar as she crossed the line in front to win Britain’s first gold medal of the week – but surely not the last.
Not with Hunt taking aim at a second gold in the 200m on Thursday night. It will take an immense performance to stop her.
“I want to be the best, I don’t shy away from that,” she said. “I train incredibly hard because I want to be the best.”
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