Yahoo Sports GB sprinter Tagoe can finally dream after 'career-changing moment'
"I didn't know if I was ever going to be able to come back – I would step on the track and I would get hurt," said Great Britain sprinter Annie Tagoe.
Making her major championship debut last summer was a reward for overcoming nearly a decade of pain that would have convinced many to give up athletics.
A series of knee injuries and arthritis limited the 31-year-old to racing at just 19 competitions between October 2012 and May 2021.
Tagoe was part of the squad that won 4x100 metres relay bronze at last year's World Athletics Championships in Budapest, running in the heat to qualify the team for the final.
"Last year was a massive career-changing moment for me," she told BBC Radio London.
"To be able to go to the World Championships and leave with a medal, nothing can top that – obviously the Olympics – but I take it one step at a time."
Tagoe is set to compete in the 100m at this weekend's UK Athletics Championships in Manchester, with a strong performance aiding her bid to make the team for Paris 2024.
If she can do that, she will deliver on the promise she showed as a teenager, when she took home a relay bronze medal from the 2010 Youth Olympic Games in Singapore.
'Depression made me lose my hair'
Having to wait so long to fulfil her potential at senior level has understandably been incredibly tough.
"Up until maybe two years ago, I was really struggling with depression to the point where I ended up losing a lot of my hair," Tago explained.
"I still don't understand what happened, how I made the team, or even being injury free.
"If you are mentally strong, I think that is a massive factor in running fast and being prepared to race."
Tagoe has faced other challenges – previously telling BBC Sport about dealing with racism as a young black woman – yet she has always strived to focus on her career and pursue her interests.
Raised by a single mum of five, she played football for Queens Park Rangers as a child, while also attending drama school.
"When I was playing for QPR girls, we lived in north west London and [my mum] used to take me, but it just became too much for her with my other siblings," she said.
"When I stopped, I started doing other sports; I did trampolining, I did netball, I did basketball."
Talent which knows no bounds
Tagoe's extraordinary range of talents also includes being signed to an international model agency, while she recently took up surfing.
"Right now, I'm a pottery maker – I can make pots, vases, cups, mugs, everything."
But athletics has always been the arena in which she was most determined to succeed.
Moving to a new training base in Houston, Texas, in 2021 has helped to deliver 100m and 200m personal bests of 11.43 and 23.80 seconds respectively.
"The sun and my coach and just the new environment really helped me and I just gradually started being myself again," she said.
"The first year that I came here, I was running so slow, but I was so happy because I was running healthy."
Just as happy was her mum Harriet, knowing that all of the hurdles they went through were paying dividends.
"We didn’t think all this hard work and years of pain would ever come to this," Annie said.
"I know I can run a huge PB. You heard it here first."
