A lap with Emily Newnham

We talk to the newly-crowned European under-23 champion who is having to become accustomed to keeping top-class company

It’s hard to say which moment was more surreal for Emily Newnham – winning a European under-23 gold medal or sitting in a call room alongside Femke Bol. Both belong to a whirlwind 12 months that have catapulted the 21-year-old from an emerging prospect to one of Britain’s top 400m hurdlers.

Her triumph at the European Under-23 Championships in Bergen last month delivered it all – a 400m hurdles personal best and championships record of 54.08, as well as a second gold medal as part of the victorious 4x400m relay team.

“I don’t think I’ll properly process it until the season’s over,” Newnham says, reflecting on the win. “It still doesn’t feel real. As athletes, we’re always thinking of the next thing.”

Over the past year, she has not only stood on the European Indoor podium in both the mixed and women’s 4x400m relays, but also shared warm-up tracks and call rooms with some of the sport’s biggest names – including reigning world champion Bol.

“It’s just insane,” she says. “In call rooms I’ll be sitting next to her and I’m like: ‘Oh my gosh it’s Femke Bol!’ but I have to tell myself to focus because I am about to race her. You watch athletes like her for years and I think that’s why I can’t comprehend where I am now. I still wonder how I got to this point.”

The gold medal in Bergen was the product of two years of quiet rebuilding, after a painful near-miss at the European U20 championships in 2023 taught her more than any win ever could. Missing out on a medal by just 0.001 seconds lit a fire that hasn’t gone out since.

“The anger and the sadness stays with you so much more than the triumph of winning,” she says. “I learned back then that I wasn’t ready mentally. Everyone around me knew I was physically capable of getting a medal but I didn’t have the mental headspace to go out there and achieve it.”

To prepare for her 2024 campaign, Newnham took a different approach. She worked not just on her stride patterns or conditioning, but her mindset – even bringing in a sports psychologist to help her tackle nerves and expectations. Her gold medal race, ironically, wasn’t the cleanest in terms of execution.

“It didn’t go to plan at all,” she says. “The gun went and everything that my coach told me to do… I did the…