A world leading performance from the British women’s 4 x 100m relay team of Dina Asher-Smith, Amy Hunt, Desiree Henry and Daryll Neita set the standard for a fantastic afternoon of track and field at the 2025 Novuna London Athletics Meet.
Having watched their male counterparts finish second to Jamaica in a season’s best time of 38.08 moments earlier, the quartet – with the backing of a capacity crowd of 60,000 – raced to victory in 41.69, the third-fastest time ever by a Great Britain and Northern Ireland women’s team and only marginally short of the 41.55 national record set at the Olympic Games in Tokyo (2021).
Jamaica finished second (42.50), France finished third (43.54) and Ireland, in a brilliant new national record time of 43.73, finished in fourth place.
“It felt so good to do that in front of a home crowd,” said two-time Olympic relay medallist Desiree Henry as the raucous crowd celebrated behind her. “We’ve all got friends and family here and we really wanted to put on a show. We haven’t run together since we became Olympic silver medallists in Paris (Olympic Games) so it was important to do well today.”
Writing on Instagram following the event she added: “London Diamond League was absolutely incredible! The cheering! The atmosphere! Running a world lead with the girls…ughhh, just everything was incredible!”
A little over two hours later and Asher-Smith, Hunt and Neita were back on track, this time over 200m.
The race was won by Olympic 100m champion Julien Alfred (Saint Lucia) in a meeting record, world lead (at the time) and national record of 21.71 (-0.6m/s). Asher-Smith, the former world and European 200m champion, finished second in 22.25 – a season’s best at the time – while Hunt broke her long-standing personal best with 22.31 in third: “That was very emotional because my PB is from six years ago… so I have come a long way since then,” said the 23-year-old. “Of course it would be nice to be fastest Brit, but mostly I just need to get quicker each race and that was what I did today. It shows what I can do with a good lane and the vibe is right.”
Neita – a multiple Olympic, world and European relay medallist – finished sixth in 22.69 (also a season’s best at the time).
Inspired by her performance in London, Hunt went on to win an incredible 200m silver at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo in 22.14 (having run a lifetime best of 22.08 in the semi-final). The Great Britain and Northern Ireland women’s relay quartet finished fourth.
The Novuna London Athletics Meet will return to the London Stadium on Saturday 18 July 2026. Buy your tickets now: https://www.britishathletics.org.uk/events-and-tickets/novuna-london-athletics-meet-2026/
