When Amber Anning left Britain for the United States at 18, she had no idea how much the move would test her beyond the track. Her first year at LSU brought culture shock, struggles with her weight, and hurtful comments from teammates who called her “fat” and “overweight.” But Anning slowly adapted, and after transferring to Arkansas, she rediscovered her love for athletics and reached the biggest moment of her NCAA career in 2024, winning the 400m title in 50.79 seconds. Now, after seven years of training in the United States, the British star has decided to bring her career back home.

On October 3, Owen shared a post on Instagram announcing Anning’s major move back to the UK. The message read, “Welcome home, Amber 🙌 Amber Anning 🇬🇧 has moved back to the UK…” Anning herself made the moment even more emotional with a comment under the post. “I’m home🥹🥲,” she wrote.

The move marks the end of a long American chapter that began when Anning left Britain as a teenager after receiving a scholarship to study, train, and compete at Louisiana State University in 2019. Her first NCAA season came in 2020, when she won bronze in the SEC Indoor 400m in 52.25 seconds and also helped LSU’s 4x400m relay team claim bronze. She also won the 400m at the Tyson Invitational in 52.22.

A year later, Anning produced an even stronger campaign. She finished fifth in the 400m at the NCAA Indoor Championships in 51.83 seconds and helped LSU finish fourth in the 4x400m. In 2022, her final season with LSU, Anning returned to the NCAA Indoor Championships and finished ninth in the 400m preliminaries. After three seasons at LSU, Anning made another major decision in her college career.

She transferred to Arkansas for the 2023 season, choosing the program for its facilities, coach Chris Johnson and its strong women’s 400m group. The move gave Anning a new training environment and proved to be an important step in her development. She quickly began producing results. In 2023, Anning helped Arkansas win the NCAA Indoor 4x400m title in a world-best 3:21.75, running the opening leg in 51.47 seconds. She also finished sixth individually in the NCAA Indoor 400m.

Then came the breakthrough she had been building toward. At the 2024 NCAA Indoor Championships, Anning won the 400m title in 50.79 seconds. She later finished third in the outdoor 400m in 49.59 seconds and helped Arkansas win the NCAA Outdoor 4x400m title in a collegiate-record 3:17.96. After completing her college career and graduating from Arkansas in 2024, Anning remained in the United States as a professional athlete.

She continued to represent Great Britain on the international stage while training in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Her professional career soon brought even bigger achievements. At the Paris 2024 Olympics, Anning finished fifth in the women’s 400m final in a British-record 49.29 seconds. She also helped Great Britain win bronze in both the mixed 4x400m and women’s 4x400m relays, leaving Paris with two Olympic medals.

In 2025, she added a major individual global title to her résumé. At the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Nanjing, Anning won the 400m gold in 50.60 seconds, becoming the first British woman to win an individual world indoor sprint title. She later won the British 400m title in Birmingham and reached the 400m final at the World Championships in Tokyo, where she finished fifth in a season’s best 49.36 seconds.

Even as her career continued to grow, her training base remained in the United States. In February 2026, Anning was still training in Fayetteville when she opened her 400m season at the Wooo Pig Classic, running 50.51 seconds. But now, Anning’s seven-year American journey has come to an end, a chapter built on sacrifices, difficult moments and some of the biggest achievements of her career.

Amber Anning’s LSU struggles revealed as British star returns home with LA28 dream

When Amber Anning arrived at LSU, Anning had to adjust to an entirely new world. She had been familiar with British athletics, but the American collegiate system brought a different level of competition. Anning described the transition as going from being a “small fish in a very big pond.” She had moved to America because she wanted to test herself against the best and believed the country could give her the world-class competition and training environment needed to reach that level. But the adjustment was anything but simple.

She arrived in America “really lean and really toned,” but her body changed as she adapted to college life. She was lifting more, eating differently and getting used to much larger food portions than she had experienced in Britain. “I wasn’t running very fast and I was struggling with weight,” Anning recalled.

The changes affected her confidence as well as her performances. She has spoken about struggling with how she looked and recalled returning home for Christmas to find that even her parents barely recognised how much her body had changed. At the same time, Anning was trying to understand why her performances were not matching the work she was putting into training. Injuries also disrupted her progress.

The pressure eventually began to affect her relationship with athletics itself. Then, while she was still building her life in America, Anning faced an even more painful loss. Her childhood coach, Lloyd Cowan, died in 2021. Cowan had played a major role in her development from her teenage years and had helped guide her rise before she moved to the United States. Being thousands of miles from home made the loss even harder, and Anning could not attend his funeral.

Through all of those setbacks, however, Anning kept moving forward. And now, after spending seven years building her career in the United States, Anning has returned to Britain with another major goal ahead. “I wanted more, but I’ve set my sights on LA [2028 Olympics]. I know what I need to change in the next four years,” she said. With LA28 now ahead, Anning will begin that next Olympic chapter from London, back in the country where her journey first began.