Eugene Amo-Dazie, the accountant who became the prince of British sprinters – Corriere.it

In times of athletics full of salaries and economic support for athletes, there are pleasant exceptions that bode well for those who practice sport (and sprinting) almost as an amateur, in more modest conditions than exasperated professionalism. This is confirmed by two sprinters, one American and the other English, both capable of going below the barrier of excellence of ten seconds flat. Surprisingly in Eugene at the American qualifying «Trials» for the next World Cup in Budapest, it was Cravont Charleston, an outsider wearing a white T-shirt and nondescript shoes. The sprinter from North Carolina ran in 9.95, thus managing to beat two well-established and branded champions like Christian Coleman and Noah Lyles.

But it is not an isolated case since not even a month earlier, in Graz in Austria, another Eugene, but this time it is his first name, the Briton Amo-Dadzie ran an even faster hundred meters in 9.93, best European seasonal performance and fourth fastest Briton ever. Anyone who believes that to do so he dedicated himself to athletics full time is very mistaken, in fact he is a professional accountant without sponsors or funding who, interviewed in black body at the finish line and joking, but not too much, said: «If know someone in Nike, Adidas, New Balance, Puma, Asics or others, send them to me». He only started competing four years ago at the age of 26 and also competed against Olympic 100m champion Lamont Marcell Jacobs at the European Indoor Championships in March, missing the final.

The story of Amo-Dadzie is not so singular, there are many including our Marcello Fiasconaro – former world record holder of the 800 meters set half a century ago and still a European record – who started athletics by chance on loan from other sports. If our “March” came from rugby, the Briton also by chance ventured into a local athletics meeting after playing football in east London. He’d only gone there to watch the 100m when his childhood friend who accompanied him said, ‘You could beat these guys with a pair of spiked shoes. I wonder why you’ve never tried.” Amo-Dadzie had always been fast, ever since his secondary school days — he had a personal best of 11.3 seconds — despite the fact that he had never trained and never joined a local club. He had vowed to join the athletics team while studying at the University of Nottingham, but he dropped out due to the busy schedules and distractions of student life. In short, “before graduation, athletics was not at the top of my list of priorities” he explains laughing. Yet his friends have long chided him gently for wasting his talent on opposing defenders in amateur football and being content to follow athletics from a distance.

So at an old age for a sprinter that afternoon in east London he decided to give it a try, borrowing the bolts, just like Fiasconaro did, and starting an escalation that in a few years led him to descend below the clear ten wall. The next morning his doorbell rang, it was the UK Anti-Doping Officers (UKAD) asking him to provide a urine sample. «It was the confirmation that what had happened was not a dream but had really happened. Still in disbelief in the following days I went to check on the time lists on World Athletics and I saw that I shared with Prescod the fourth place all time in the classification of the fastest hundred meters run by sprinters britishonly six cents from national best of the Olympic champion of Barcelona (1992) Linford Christie». To those who ask him to devote himself full time to athletics now, he replies that he doesn’t think about it at all, he just needs to train like amateurs after a day’s work, going to the track instead of to the pub, there’s still time for a beer the same at the end of the day. And show up in the race without any pressure.