The British sprinter has grown up with the Alexander Stadium and is looking to add more special memories to her collection at the European Champs in August.

Alexander Stadium has certainly played its part during Amy Hunt’s life in athletics. Her first experience of competing at the West Midlands venue was, she thinks, a Birchfield Harriers Open Meeting. “I would have been 12 or 13,” says the woman who was born in Nottinghamshire.

“I remember doing the English Schools [Championships] there, then being selected for SIAB (Schools’ International Athletic Board), and having to go to another room to try on the England kit. That was so exciting because it was my first international vest.”

She will return there this month having represented her country with distinction many times since, through age group championships to the senior ranks, where she has been able to capture Olympic, world and European honours. But she wants more.

Having just recently celebrated her 24th birthday, Hunt is approaching the UK Championships on June 20-21 with her focus not only on successfully defending her 100m title and trying to win what would be a first ever senior 200m national gold, but also booking a return ticket to the very same track in August for the European Championships. For an athlete that loves nothing more than the heat of competition, her excitement about the task at hand is palpable – especially so given how well she knows her way around.

“It's really, really cool to go back,” she says. “Using the facilities gives such a sense of nostalgia. I remember going to the warm-up at English Schools, walking into the indoor track they have there, and it was absolutely reeking of Deep Heat, so every time I walk in, I'm like: ‘Oh my gosh, is it going to smell like that?’.”

She adds: “When I was a kid, I went to watch the Birmingham Diamond League there in 2015. Greg Rutherford was competing and I remember he stayed for ages to take selfies. I think my parents still have my selfie with him up somewhere in the house.

“It's an incredibly cool place for me to compete, because I've been an athlete, a junior athlete and a fan there, and now I'm somewhat of a headliner there, I guess, and it's just been very cool to see the progression.”

Hunt was also able to experience what it was like to be part of the Alexander crowd, when she took her seat in the by then redeveloped stadium for the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games. Just a few months earlier, she had undergone surgery for a ruptured quadriceps tendon – an injury that brought an abrupt halt to the world U18 200m record-holder’s progression into the senior fold. From her vantage point in the stands, there was one thing that it didn’t take long to notice about the new surroundings.

“The track is incredibly quick,” she says. “We saw the times that were run at the Commonwealth Games a few years ago were of an incredibly high standard across the board. Last year, I came second in the [UK Championships] 200m with the same time [22.14] that went on to win me a world silver medal [in Tokyo]. When you can have national trials at a track that is of such good quality, it really raises the level.”

As if to underline the point, Hunt won that aforementioned British 100m title last summer with a time of 11.02 that, at the time of writing, is still her PB for the distance. It’s one of the many Alexander Stadium memories she treasures but the 200m from those championships – won fractionally by Dina Asher-Smith despite both recording a championship record time as Daryll Neita finished third – is another.

“We said between us that that was one of the most fun races we've ever done,” recalls the Charnwood AC athlete. “There are not many times with a sprint event at the trials that you truly don't know who's going to win, even with two centimetres to go to the line.”

That trio will expect to be to the fore again, not just at the domestic dust-up, but when those European Championships roll around later in the summer. With the women’s 100m final taking place on opening night at Birmingham 26, there is the potential to get off to a spectacular start in front of a home crowd.

Hunt has already spoken of her ambitions to chase down the British records of 10.83 for 100m and 21.88 for 200m held by
Asher-Smith. She would also like to start working on building a medal tally to match that of the former 200m world champion, who is her nation’s most decorated athlete in European Championships history, having won a total of eight (six gold and two silver).

“It's so incredibly inspiring, especially when we consider that her first championships was 2013 in Moscow,” says Hunt of Asher-Smith’s body of work. “To have both the longevity and the medals to back it up is a very rare thing. I think we maybe take it for granted, but not many countries have someone who has represented them for such a long time and brought so much back. Not just in terms of the times, but also being able to do it consistently back to back, year after year, showing up, being so present and making every single final is something I would like to aspire to.

“It's very inspiring to see a British woman be so consistently strong year after year after year, and I'd love to love to hopefully achieve that too, but I think it's so much harder than people can ever fully conceive of and realise.”

It’s a rare luxury that the venue for the national trials is also where the international championships will take place – but Hunt is planning to use this month’s visit to do some valuable homework, especially where the 200m is concerned.

“It's really nice to have a few more runs around that bend, work out my modelling and my push and pull of it. In Tokyo, something that helped me was being in the same lane for all three rounds, but I've only ever run the 200m twice at the Birmingham track, and one of those was in lane two in the heat, so it wasn't super helpful.

“It would be really good to get a couple more rounds on that bend, because at the Europeans the top eight ranked athletes miss the heats. So, when I get into the semi-final, it's game on. I have to know what I'm doing and where I'm pushing.

“People don't always realise that every track is different. Shanghai has a very tight turn and is very different to a track like Brussels, which has an incredibly long bend, for example. Getting the experience on these tracks in terms of the 200m is always a really good thing.”

Success this summer would have real significance to Hunt. The European Championships have a very special place
in her heart. It was at the 2024 edition, in Rome, where she sampled senior international competition for the first time, an important and emotional staging post on her return from injury.

There was a seventh-place finish in the 100m final, won by Asher-Smith, before the pair worked together as part of the 4x100m line-up that secured gold.

“It was significant for me in two ways,” says Hunt, who lives and trains in the Italian city of Padua, under coach Marco Airale. “It was tangible as in: ‘I now actually have a senior international medal, it's on my Wikipedia, it's on my World Athletics page, I have a medal I can wear around my neck. I've made that journey back’.

“But also, in a more emotional sense, it was almost like a home Europeans for me. Having moved out to Italy a year prior to that, I was just shocked at how the fans were, and the love that I felt from kind of being part Italian – from the commentators, the fans, the crowd. It was incredibly special to me to feel loved and welcomed by my adopted country, and also welcomed back into athletics, so it was a big moment for me and it was a big springboard.”

She will soon be able to compare the experience to an actual home championships, with the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow also on the horizon, albeit Hunt plans to contest just one individual event in Scotland.

“It will be interesting for me this year, dealing with two championships,” she says. “Having the intensity of one, then having a week off and having to go straight into the next.

“You have to deal with the emotional intensity too, because, as I've said many times in the past, every time you stand on that start line, you have to believe that you are going to win, otherwise what are you doing there?

“But when that maybe doesn't happen, it's quite hard mentally to deal with the fact it didn't happen, because you've been so convinced of that point. And championships are always full of those sorts of emotions. Everything is so heightened, you're under the lights, you're in front of the crowd and everything means 1000 times more, so you just have to make sure you're returning to ground level every night.

“But I love the vulnerability of putting yourself on the line.”