After a series of near misses, the British sprinter will finally be realising a dream when he competes at the European Indoor Championships

Of the 12 athletes winning their first senior Great Britain vests at the European Indoor Championships in Apeldoorn, John Otugade has had to show by far the most patience.

While teenagers such as Innes Fitzgerald and Ava Lloyd have been quick to reach that landmark, the 30-year-old Shaftesbury Barnet sprinter will be achieving a particularly long-term goal when he competes in the men’s 60m heats on Saturday morning (March 8).

“Also, my training. I used to train quite a lot by myself but over the past year and a half or so, I’ve started working with another sprinter, Ade Adewale, and having the opportunity to spar with him on a weekly basis has definitely sharpened me up massively. The third thing is probably just experience. Now, I just know how to manage things a lot better.”

What Otugade describes as a “hybrid approach” approach to his training is clearly paying off. There are the blocks and speed sessions with Adewale once a week, plus he follows “[coach] Tom McNab’s programme, plus some bits for myself, but then overseen by my good friend Elijah Winn”. All of this is balanced alongside his day job of being a solicitor, focused on corporate law and commercial contracts.

“I’m used to it,” he says of the juggling act. “It’s my third year doing law, including my period of training. Before that, I was doing investment banking and, before that, I was a paralegal, so I’ve been in the professional world for a while now and this is not anything new to me. While it’s difficult, I know how to navigate having a job and training/competing at a high level.”

Given that Otugade has so much going on in his wider life, the obvious question is to ask exactly what kept him going when the pursuit of his sporting dreams was proving to be so frustrating. It certainly would have been understandable if he had opted to step away from a sport in which he has been involved since childhood.

“One, probably habit,” he says by way of an answer. “I’ve done the sport for so long. Secondly, I’ve always had the goal of making a team. I’ve always thought I was capable of being able to do that. I don’t like to have regrets and I don’t want to look back in 20, 30, 40 years’ time and think I didn’t achieve what I believed I was capable of achieving. Until I achieved those goals, I wasn’t going to quit.

“I’ve always been a competitor. I’m probably not the best in training – I find it a little bit hard to get going – but, when it comes to competition, I relish that feeling of trying to get to the line first, that feeling that you get on the start line where you’re nervous and you’ve got the butterflies, because nothing really else in life can replicate that fight or flight feeling you get before a big race. It’s the competition aspects that I really relish.”

The trick in Apeldoorn will be to stay relaxed. The contradiction of an event like the 60m is that while so much of it revolves around explosive power, finding your flow and not trying to force the issue too much is equally critical.

“It’s something that I still struggle with a little bit,” says Otugade. “I equalled my personal best with 6.60 [in January] but haven’t quite managed to run 6.5. I went to the [Southern Championships] in early February, and I won it in 6.62 but I was so angry, I just walked out the stadium afterwards. I was like: ‘I don’t understand why I’m not running 6.5!’. What you want to do going into any meet is to stay focused on executing in as relaxed a manner as possible and I think the times will then come.

“I’m quite an emotional sprinter. I really like to battle, so I struggle with the aspect of relaxation a lot. It’s something I’m still working on. When you just let things happen, then they invariably happen so that’s the approach that I’m taking into the Euros.

“Towards the back end of the race, that’s where you want to start to relax. It’s having that ability to be aggressive but be relaxed at the same time. There’s a fine balance to be struck but you definitely need to have it to be successful in sprinting.”

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