THE ‘world’s fastest accountant’ first discovered he had raw speed when he used to run for PUBLIC TRANSPORT.
Eugene Amo-Dadzie is not your average athlete — for starters, he has a full-time job number crunching and volunteers as a school governor.
He did not come through the junior ranks like his rivals, taking up athletics at the age of 26 after time at university and undergoing business training.
His introduction to the elite end of sprinting only came TWO MONTHS ago with a blistering 100 metres mark of 9.93sec in Austria that shocked everyone.
That stunning showing booked his World Athletics Championships spot in Budapest and has only been officially bettered by THREE MEN in British history.
But he always had an inkling that he was speedy — especially when he always managed to catch the bus or train while running late for school or work.
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I’m an accountant who began sprinting in 2018, now I’m the fastest man in Europe
Amo-Dadzie, 31, said: “Back in the day, I grew up in Walthamstow in East London and I lived between bus stops.
“There was maybe a 100m distance between the two. So with my schoolbag on and hard shoes, I’d just take off running for this bus.
“One of the kids on the bus saw me and was smiling and laughing, thinking: ‘He’s not going to make this’.
“I don’t know how fast the bus was going but I remember getting on it.
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“The kid just stood there open-mouthed, ‘Oh my God’. So, growing up, I’d recognise how quick I was.
“Later, I lived in Highams Park for a bit. My house was an eight-minute walk from the station.
“Sometimes I’d leave home with the train coming in two minutes. I’d think to myself: ‘Yeah, I’m going to make it’. I’d just sprint from my road to Highams Park station and I’d make it.
“I’d be completely dying when I got the train. But I used to do little things like that. Almost testing that my speed was still there.”
Amo-Dadzie, who is married and has a two-year-old daughter, now lives in Rainham, Essex, and trains twice a week with a coach at Lee Valley outside of his day job (below).
His company, St George (Berkeley Group) developments, granted him annual leave to be in Budapest — but he is back at work on August 29.
On Saturday, he will line up in the 100m heats against pros who have trained most of their lives.
Amo-Dadzie, a man of faith, said: “It’s surreal. I’m not the guy who said he grew up with aspirations and dreams of being an athlete and going to world championships.
“This is never something I expected to do. It all just changed one fateful day, God flicked a switch in my head.
“I was playing football next to an athletics track and saw a 100m race going on.
“Friends knew I was quick and would grill me: ‘If we had your talent, Eugene, what we could have done with it. You’ve wasted your talent’.
“One mate said to me: ‘You were fast at school, why did you never try athletics?’. And in that moment, I thought: ‘What do I have to lose?’.
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“That was the winter of 2018 and, thank God, I sit here now, the world’s fastest accountant, about to be on the world stage. I hope my story shows it’s never too late to get into sport.
“If me, a family man, a chartered accountant, a primary school governor, can do it, by the grace of God, why can’t you?”
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