by Stuart Weir
Darryl Neita takes bronze in an exciting Women’s 60 meters in Istanbul. Stuart Weir wrote this piece from the final at the end of Day one!
Darryl Neita
Darryl Neita is going home from Istanbul with a bronze medal. I am sure her dog, Melon, will be delighted to see her without worrying about the color of the medal! It has been a good 12 months for Darryl, the British sprinter who is now based in Italy.
It is the third consecutive championship at which she had medalled – Commonwealth Games, European outdoors, and European Indoors. Always pushing for more, Darryl named 2022 “the year of the 100th”, explaining, “I didn’t qualify for the Worlds in the 200m by one 100th of a second. I ran 10.90 as a PR, but 10.89 would have been lovely! One 100th away from the final in Oregon. And in Munich, one 100th away from the gold”.
See Darryl Neita, part 2, “The year of the 100th of a second” – runblogrun
In Istanbul, she ran 7.14, 7.07, and 7.12 in the three rounds. Her comments afterward show the bitter-sweet effect of fractions of seconds: “I am happy to bring a bronze medal home. I still think I could have run better. My acceleration and my execution weren’t amazing, but it feels great to come home with a medal. It has been an amazing indoor season. It has been great to be so competitive over 60m. To come here and win a medal after the indoor season I have had, I have to be happy with that.
“I had a fantastic semi-final today; I always have a good semi-final. It’s a different level in the final. I feel like I am a lot closer than I was. I don’t feel like I messed up, I still ran 7.12, which is a decent time, but I’ll reflect on it with my coach, and we’ll be back”.
I love the way Darryl is always so honest in her evaluations. No hiding behind the medal achievement, she faces up to the fact that she ran 7.07 in the semi but 7.12, just as she had in the Commonwealth Games, 10.90 in the semi and 11.07 in the final.
She will go away, work on it and come back stronger.
