17 August 2023 , 08:10
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He knew he was quick the first time the school bus sailed past his stop and he chased it down.
Later, when he got a job, he would give himself 120 seconds to make the train station an eight-minute walk away, “just to test my speed was still there”.
Everybody familiar with Eugene Amo-Dadzie knew he had wheels. He was the fast guy who didn’t do athletics.
The chartered accountant who played football. Who was “content to be the guy that ‘could' have done it”.
Look at him now. In Budapest preparing for the World Athletics Championships, ranked second in Britain this year behind world leader Zharnel Hughes after clocking 9.93secs in Austria in June.
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“I can’t be the guy who said he grew up with aspirations and dreams of being an athlete and going to world championships,” said the Londoner. “That’s not my story.
Amo-Dadzie poses with 60m bronze medal alongside winner Reece Prescod and runner-up Jeremiah Azu at British Indoor Champs in Birmingham (British Athletics via Getty Images)“Track was my first love but I’d sit at home and watch championships thinking, ‘yeah I could have been that guy if I’d joined a club; if I’d trained I could have made it.’ For years, that was my story.”
Until one day when he was playing football next to an athletics track and “God flicked a switch in my head”. In that moment he thought, ‘what do I have to lose?’
Five years on Amo-Dadzie still works 9-to-5 and has taken annual leave to be in Hungary. “But I sit here now, the world’s fastest accountant, about to be on the world stage!”
World leader Zharnel Hughes wins 200m final at British Championships (British Athletics via Getty Imag)The 31-year old is an antidote to the say-nothing seriousness of professional sport today. Married with children, athletics is only one part of his life.
“There’s nothing that’s going to happen in my life of track and field that is that serious, that’s my mindset,” he said. “I’m a husband, a father, a governor of a primary school, a chartered accountant.
“There are way more significant and important things going on in my actual life so I’m able to tap into a completely different mindset when I come into the track and field space.
The men's 100m final at the British Championships in July took place in monsoon conditions (British Athletics via Getty Imag)“I heard Elaine Thompson-Herah (Olympic 100m champion) say on a podcast that she had signed a new deal with Puma before the world champs last year and if she didn’t come top three, her contract would have been cut.
“I thought to myself, of course I have aspirations of being in a situation where a brand want to sign me up but I have to take advantage of the fact the outcome of a race or a championships, or where I end up in the standings at the end of the year, isn’t food on the table for my family.”
Asked what Hughes and Reece Prescod, Britain’s best-known sprinters, make of him, Amo-Dadzie smiled.
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Amo-Dadzie in semi-final action at British Championships (British Athletics via Getty Images)“I think there’s maybe an element of ‘who is this guy’," he said. "But every time we have conversations they find the whole ‘world’s fastest accountant’ thing really funny. So it’s all love.”
Sebastian Coe has defended World Athletics’ continued ban on athletes from Russia and Belarus competing in the sport.
The World Championships, starting in Budapest on Saturday, and the track and field competition at next summer’s Paris Olympics are closed to the two warring nations.
World Athletics chief Sebastian Coe (TONY KARUMBA/AFP via Getty Images)Wimbledon operated the same blanket ban last year but softened its stance after the world tours denied competitors ranking points and imposed fines of £1.6 million on the British tennis authorities.
Lord Coe, president of athletics’ governing body, confirmed there would be no “neutral” athletes at the Worlds, nor Russians in Paris in spite of the pathway offered across other sports by the International Olympic Committee.
He said: “We made the decision that we felt was in the best interests of the sport and was the right decision for our sport.
(PA)"Decisions we’ve made in the past have been tough ones, whether it’s around preserving the female category, transfers of allegiance, the initial suspension of Russia back in 2015 – we’ve done it because it’s been the right thing to do.
“If it has given other sports permission or comfort to feel that they can do the same, well that’s a good thing but it’s entirely up to them – we didn’t do it for that reason.”
Coe insists World Athletics is “not the ‘computer says no’ federation - we create working groups to monitor the situation.”
Asked if he felt under pressure from the IOC to allow the Russians back, he replied: “Do I look like it?”