We catch up with the Olympic 100m finalist who has had the season of her life

Olympic relay bronze medallist Daryll Neita recognises the importance of staying in her own lane, both literally and figuratively.

The 25-year-old has run her 10 best ever times for 100m in 2021, but negotiating the fine line she treads between total belief in her ability, versus acceptance of where she is relative to the world’s fastest women, has contributed to a mindset befitting of an Olympic 100m finalist.

Neita – who clocked a 10.93 PB in the Wanda Diamond League final in Zurich – is now the second-fastest British athlete of all time and has never doubted her potential.

In an interview with AW earlier this summer – prior to her 10.96 in the Tokyo 100m heats – she said: “I want to go sub-11 seconds … I know I’m capable of that.”

“I’m very strict with my diary and every single session I’m writing things down, writing down my goals,” says the Rana Reider-coached athlete. “Everything I achieved this year I had written down, I had said I was going to do it.

“It makes you accountable. You can’t go around saying it and not back it up, but I had every single bit of faith I could do it and it’s been good to have that trust and belief in myself.”

Neita relocated from the UK to the US following the 2019 World Championships in Doha, where she had won her second global relay silver medal but finished fourth in her 100m semi-final.

“I remember seeing all the coaches and their groups in Doha, thinking ‘I need to be with one of these guys next year’. I thought ‘all the coaches here are the ones that made it to the Champs, so let me do some scouting’.

“I had a conversation with Rana and he said he’d love to coach me. I’m really proud of that decision, because it’s obviously not easy to just pack your life up and move to a different country with an Uber account and a suitcase.”

A challenging 2020 did have one advantage: “I think it actually strengthened me a lot,” says Neita. “I took the year to work on myself, to really get in tune with who I am and what it is I want to achieve. Going into the 2021 season I had such stringent goals and my mindset is much more developed now.

“This year is a combination of a lot of things, but I think I’ve just really matured and, in the environment I’m in, I just learn so much. I’m around Olympic champions, world champions and it’s just a completely different ball game. It’s just night and day compared to what I was doing before.”

While Neita’s performances were not unexpected, the transition from idolising the best in the world to being one of the best in the world has taken some work.

“As I trained for the Olympics, every single session I would imagine having the top girls in the world next to me. I really believe in the power of imagination and affirmation and stuff like that. I feel like you have to believe it before you see it.

“The women’s 100m at the moment is so exciting for everyone watching, but to be in it is even more exciting – it’s a different kind of fire.

“Everyone is really focused on what they’re going to do, but it’s having that understanding and acceptance because yeah, I’m in the race with the world lead so I want to run that fast, but I know what shape I’m in, I know what times I’m running right now, so I have to be realistic and just stick to my race plan. You need to focus on your own lane.

“The Olympics was one thing, but I think it was the Diamond League final when it really hit me. I was like ‘okay, I’m lining up with these girls every single week, I belong here’, and I just genuinely believed it was my destiny.”