Amy Hunt, world silver medalist
One of my absolute highlights of 2025 was Amy Hunt’s silver medal at the Tokyo World Championships. Unfortunately, due to health reasons, I couldn’t be there in person, but I watched Amy meets in seven other meetings in 2025 and speaks to him several times during the year.
Amy won the 200 silver in Tokyo, finishing fast in 22.14, behind Melissa Jefferson-Wooden but ahead of Sherika Jackson, Dina-Asher Smith and the rest. He was 9th in the 100m half, the fastest non-finalist.
After winning that silver medal, his comments were full of emotion. “Going through a cleft, surgical repair, going through the Cambridge system, getting my degree, moving to countries where I don’t really speak the language yet. It was a huge roller coaster and I just trusted myself the whole time, I just knew I had it in me and that failure was never really an option for me. it’s incredible, that’s why I screamed that there was something in me, so young, I was running faster than when I was 17.
A year ago, Amy did not make the GB team in either the 100m or 200m. Now he was a world championship medalist. Going back to 2024, it was a big disappointment not to make the Great Britain team in the individual events for the Olympics, but he overcame it and moved on.
Amy is based in Padua, Italy with coach Marco Airale. When he joined, his group included Darryl Neeta, Jeremiah Azu and Adam Gemily, but when the other Brits all left after the 2024 season, Amy stayed on and loved it; has gone from strength to strength. In: live my dream life in many ways. I moved to Italy when I was 21. It’s so awesome! For example, who can do this? I also just love the group environment and I love the people, the warmth, training. The heat is so good. I just loved training here and I think it made me a better athlete and a better person.”
“Marco and I have been working together for over two years and our relationship has just grown and grown and it has really, really blossomed to the point where we can communicate so clearly. And we understand each other’s needs well and he really challenges me in training. When I listen to them right before I perform, it seems so overwhelming. But I know he’s not going to challenge me to do something he knows I can’t do. Whatever he gives me in the form of a session, I will be able to. It gives me confidence to know that he has that faith in me. But he challenges me even during the session. How to ask “How did that feel? And then? Why did you feel that? Why do you think this happened? What can we do to fix this?’ He really challenges me and pushes me to be a better athlete and a better technician, performer, person, which is all good.
“He makes a lot of time for all of us, for all of his athletes, and we all have a very good relationship with him. He works really hard to make it an elite environment where everyone can bounce off each other and evolve. And even in the sense that we have the best equipment, although we work out on the most random little track in Italy and the gym is very basic. It just has bars and weights, but he makes sure he has enough racks for all of us, and he just keeps things running smoothly. So all I have to do every day is get on a little tram with some old Italian ladies, run, give 110% effort and then come home. It means I can focus on monitoring what I need to do. And I just know that everything will be fine when I get to the track. There will be many trainers, physios etc. That means I have to think as little as possible about how it should be. I just have to come to watch and think about doing as well as I can at that moment.”
In part two, Amy shares her experience of being a student athlete at a traditional English university.
