Adam Gemili: Team GB’s ethnic diversity gives us an edge over our rivals

Praising diversity: Adam Gemili
Christopher Lee/Getty Images
David Churchill17 August 2016

Sprinter Adam Gemili has praised the “special and unique” ethnic diversity of Team GB.

The 22-year-old from Dartford will run in the 200m semi-finals tonight after qualifying from yesterday’s heats with a time of 20.20secs. He told the Standard that people should celebrate Team GB.

“It’s so diverse and you have so many people with so many different sorts of heritages and backgrounds and ethnicities and we come together and we do become one team.

“It’s cliche and cheesy, but it’s true and it’s great to see.

“It makes us special and unique and it means you never know what you’re going to get from who comes out to compete.

“It means people know, when they compete against people from GB, that we’ve worked hard to get to our place and we will be competitive and not go down without a fight. I think people should celebrate the diversity.”

Gemili — who has a personal best of 9.97s in the 100m and 19.98s in the 200m — is of Moroccan and Iranian heritage and said people did not expect he would be fast because of his ethnic background.

“I’m a weird mix. I’ve never heard of a sprinter with Iranian and Moroccan heritage in them,” he said.

He added: “I’m quite small and not massively muscular — people see that and maybe they don’t expect me to run fast because of my ethnic background, but for me it works so I just roll with it.”

He will run against Usain Bolt in the semi-final tonight before Friday’s final as the Jamaican bids to complete the “triple triple” by winning the 200m and 4x100m relay titles as well as the 100m for the third consecutive Olympics.

This is Gemili’s second Games, having missed out on the 100m final in London 2012. He said the best thing about the Games in London was that he realised he had a right to be in the team — but now he believes he deserves to be in the final.

At 2012 “you walked into the canteen and you have the biggest sport names in the world, Serena Williams and all of them, and you have to learn that you have the right to be there and go out and compete with the best guys in the world,” he said.

Gemili, who was born in south London, was a talented footballer who played for Chelsea FC’s youth team until he was 15, but gave up to concentrate on his GCSEs.

He was offered a contract with Dagenham and Redbridge FC at the age of 18 while still at college, but turned it down because he had started to run “faster and faster” on the track.

Instead, he attended the University of East London to study sports and exercise science with human biology while pursuing athletics.

Gemili called on fans in Rio and at home to keep up their support for Team GB: “If we get behind our athletes I think we’ll see a lot of surprising performances from people who might not necessarily have come to do anything special, but they can because the fans can give you that extra one or two per cent.”

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