Eugene Amo-Dadzie celebrated 31 years of an incredible and unusual history yesterday. The Briton is currently the leader of the arrangement European Championship 100 meters, a great achievement for someone who only made the transition from football to athletics at the age of 26. Despite the world-class brand, the athlete has no sponsor or anyone to fund his career, which is why he keeps his job as an accountant.
It all started in 2018, in East London. One day, after a soccer game with friends, Amo-Dadzie came across a local track and field game. The group was watching the 100m race when one of his friends asked him why he had never tried that modality before. “You won this race,” he shot. After all, speed was one of Amo-Dadzie’s greatest weapons in football and when he heard his friend, he shrugged. After all, in high school he managed 11.3 seconds, but despite this he never trained for a club… Not even at the University of Nottingham, where he studied, his talents were discovered and channeled into sport. “Let’s just say athletics fell off my priority list very quickly at the time,” he said jokingly recently.
That afternoon in 2018 marked Amo-Dadzie’s life forever. He decided to try athletics and a year after his first training at the Woodford Green Athletics Club, he reached the semi-finals of the British Championship, competing against Olympic athletes Adam Gemili and Harry Aikines-Aryeetey. At that time he had a personal best of 10.55 seconds, which he managed to lower to 10.20 in 2021 and to 10.05 in 2022.
And a week ago, on the encounter from Graz, Austria, reached 9.93 seconds, a world-class record, making him the fourth best British athlete of all time, and also the 11th athlete from Britain to lose 10 seconds in the 100 metres. Still far away is the world record of Jamaican Usain Bolt, who did 9.58 on August 16, 2009 in Berlin, Germany. However, he can boast the same record as his personal best set by historic Calvin Smith, North American bronze medalist at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
“If you know anyone from Nike, Adidas, New Balance, Puma, Asics or any other brand, tell me,” he said jokingly after the race in the Austrian city. More seriously, Eugene Amo-Dadzie felt that he came to athletics “at the right time”. And he explained why: “The mindset I have now allows me to compete wisely.”
full-time bookkeeper
Amo-Dadzie admitted that he likes to have “a different story” than the great track and field champions. And he even says he considers himself “an accountant operating in the athletic world.” After all, the British athlete works full-time from home, with the permission of the company he works for, a subsidiary of the Berkeley Group, but he keeps his athletics ambitions alive and well.
And that’s why he’s aiming for the national championships in the United Kingdom, scheduled for June 8 and 9, where he dreams of beating Linford Christie’s British record of 9.87 seconds, set in 1993, when Amo-Dadzie was only one years old. “Breaking the British record? By the grace of God, why not? You may think I’m deluded, but a little delusion goes a long way,” he told Athletics Weekly.
Source: DN
