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PUTTING IN THE WORK: Tawiah-Dodoo with Paralympic silver medallist Bethany Woodward

BEING TASKED with keeping some of Britain’s fastest adolescent sprinters on the right path must be a daunting assignment but Jonas Tawiah-Dodoo has the experience to ensure that they all live up to their undeniable potential.

Three years prior to the London 2012 Olympic Games, Tawiah-Dodoo served an coaching apprenticeship with Dan Pfaff, who mentored Paralympic 100m gold medallist Jonnie Peacock and long jump Olympic champion Greg Rutherford.

The 27-year-old Tawiah-Dodoo trains at Lee Valley Athletics Centre in north London and, as he explained to the Voice of Sport, learning from Pfaff has put him in excellent stead to teach and lead six of the UK’s quickest young adults in the guise of David Bolarinwa, Jordan Kirby-Polidore, Jermaine Olasan, Sean Safo-Antwi, Deji Tobias and Chijindu Ujah.

WORLD JUNIOR FINALIST: Ujah (far right)

“From a very early stage in my coaching development I was learning from the best in the world,” said the south Londoner. “You look at his (Pfaff’s) network and he learnt from Tom Tellez, who coached Carl Lewis, so it’s like the lineage of information passed on from Tom, to Dan and myself and other coaches.

“I’d liked to think I’ve studied the best coaches in the world and tried to take from them all the good components, come back with my own philosophy and try to incorporate it all together.”

European junior champion Bolarinwa and Commonwealth Youth Games silver medallist Ujah, both 19, were finalists at the 2012 World Junior Championships in the 100m and 200m respectively, while the 22-year-old Safo-Antwi ran 6.61 seconds in the 60m in 2013 – shading almost two tenths off his personal best in the process - placing him third in the UK rankings.

MAKING MASSIVE STRIDES: Safo-Antwi

Although Tawiah-Dodoo recognises the raw talent that they possess, he also knows that there is a lot of work that they need to put in to achieve accolades at international level.

“These guys come in and a lot of them think they’re talented and come from good backgrounds but they turn up and actually realise their careers are just beginning, there’s a lot more to learn,” said the Battersea native.

“There’s so much that the youth of today don’t get exposed to at school that you have to coach, teach and train. Watching them develop over time is amazing.

“When you see the fruits of your labour you’re always happy. The guys have got a joke; ‘When will I cry? If we get to an Olympic final and a medal will you cry?’ I’m like ‘I don’t know’. There’s so many things that I want to accomplish as a coach that running fast isn’t just one of them. I want these guys to leave here and be good people, to able to move on past an athletics career and to have another component to work on.”

TUTELAGE: The 27-year-old alongside Pfaff

Following London 2012, UKA decided to centralise all elite athletic programs to Loughborough despite many athletes residing in London, which meant that Tawiah-Dodoo was made redundant.

But outside of track and field he is also employed as a sprinting coach for rugby union club Bath and has worked with illustrious athletes such as England rugby union sevens speedsters Dan Norton.

While Tawiah-Dodoo will continue to nurture his charges in London regardless of financial constraints, he affirms that sponsorship for his group of track and field upstarts would take care of numerous necessities.

“The kids that I have right now, in the system that we’ve developed here, we’ve had the best talent in the country that has actually proven it by performances,” he added.

“You look at any Olympic medallist, you look at anyone who performs at the highest level, they tend to need about three to six years of the same coach to continue progressing and I think we’re at the very beginning of that stage.

“Having the support to have the right nutritionists, sports science, sports medicine team, to get the guys to go to warm weather camp, would enable us to go to major championships and compete.”