When Amy Hunt was a teenager, she was hailed by Vogue as “one of the faces to define the decade”. It has taken a few years, and several painful detours. But the 24-year-old Cambridge University graduate with a passion for the Italian renaissance is set to create an impressive masterpiece of her own.
If all goes as expected this weekend, Hunt will become the first athlete in the 92-year history of the European Championships to win four gold medals over the same week. Already the 100m and 200m crowns are in the bag. And provided the baton gets around, two more will surely follow in the mixed and 4x100m relays on Saturday and Sunday.
No wonder she is second favourite to be the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year. However, Hunt’s hinterland is far broader than most sport stars. She lives in Padua and goes to the Guggenheim every month.
She prepares for races by playing puzzle games such as Wordle and Connections to calm herself. And when she won a world championship silver medal in Tokyo she said it proved to young girls everywhere that you could be an “academic badass and a track goddess”. Her journey to the top has also been bumpier than most.
Her mental health struggled with the twin demands of an English Literature degree at Corpus Christi College and elite sport, and she also had a series of injuries that left her wondering whether she would ever fill the potential she showed when breaking the world 200m junior record as an 18-year-old. A few years ago she ruptured her quadriceps so badly that her mum needed to lift her out of the shower. And, as she revealed after winning 200m gold on Thursday, she has also had low blood pressure this year which has caused her to nearly faint several times.
I’d be pressing the bell’. Luckily my mum and my sister are flying back and forth from Italy, and going back and forth from London, taking care of me. So it’s been such a big family effort.” The worst period, she says, came during the London Diamond League in July when she had to be taken to the medical room after racing the 200m.
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