She still goes up to the stars she races to say how cool it was, but the 20-year-old 400m runner has broken the Welsh record twice in a breakthrough summer.

Delighted to win 400m bronze at the 2026 UK Athletics Championships in a then personal best of 50.58, Charlotte Henrich was completely oblivious to the fact that she’d also broken the 44-year-old Welsh record. She describes the race as her season highlight and the “breakthrough [performance] of the breakthrough [year]”.

“I knew there was a good run coming but it’s easy to say that; I still had a lot of doubts that it was going to happen,” she reflects.

The Invicta East Kent athlete – European under-18 400m champion (2022) and the reigning European under-20 champion (2025) – has gone from strength to strength this summer.

She opened with a then personal best of 51.24 in Belfast in May, broke 51 seconds for the first time in the UK Championships final in June and went on to run a 50.45 PB to break the Welsh record for the second time in a month at the London Athletics Meet in July.

She earned her first Great Britain senior vest at the World Athletics Relays in Botswana, finished fourth in the 400m at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and finished sixth at the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham, where she also won silver medals in the 4x400m and mixed 4x400m relays.

The 20-year-old brought her year to a close at the World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest, where the British mixed 4x400m team finished second. “This season has been very surreal and just crazy,” she says. “It’s also been very unexpected.”

Coached by Nigel Stickings since 2023, Henrich is ranked third-fastest British under-20 ever (51.68) and is now 12th on the UK senior all-time list (50.45).

She credits Stickings for much of her success, stating: “He really understands me as an athlete and he’s so good at explaining things. Sometimes I just don’t get it, and he’s like, ‘Okay, let me find a different way to explain it’.”

“This year the motto has been ‘less is more’,” she continues. “I’ve actually done less, especially in the weights room, because sometimes I would just do ‘stuff’ and I’d hope it was fine, but we’ve just focused more on technique and doing things well.”

Henrich admits she’s not an ardent follower of track and field. She watched her friends Sam Reardon and Phoebe Gill at the Paris Olympics but didn’t keep up with the rest of it. As a result she thinks her goals are “maybe a bit unrealistic at times” because she genuinely doesn’t know what is good, only what she wants to achieve.

With undeniable talent underpinned by quality performances, her joyful innocence is a refreshing antidote to the perceived arrogance of those making bold and unsubstantiated athletic claims on social media.

In fact, listening to her speak, you could be forgiven for thinking she’s on the outside looking in, a starstruck spectator rather than an athlete competing at the highest level: “After the World Relays I went up to Lieke Klaver and I was like: ‘Hey! It was really cool to run against you’. I did the same thing with Henriette Jæger in London [at the Diamond League],” she says.

One particular occasion makes her laugh. She recounts an interaction with Yemi Mary John – now her international team-mate – at the 2024 UK Championships. “I went up to her and I was like: ‘I just want to say you’re really cool’, but she doesn’t remember it!”

As Henrich continues to make a name for herself, perhaps that’s for the best.