STEFAN Amokwandoh has started the year in terrific form as his year builds to trying to go one better at the English Schools Championships than last year.

The Whitgift School teenager (pictured, right) won triple jump gold medal at the national championships last summer - with very little training.

He was soon persuaded to put more effort into athletics - and a winter of training has clearly paid off. His success last year was at U15 level. This season he has stepped up in age-group and is competing at the lower end of the two-year U17 age-group.

But competing against older people has not stopped him winning medals.

Amokwandoh earned bronze at the U17 South England Athletics Association (SEAA) event in Lee Valley in late January.

If he was pleased with that result, he was delighted with his efforts two weeks later, leaping to London U17 Games gold with a personal best 13.44m.

He has national and county indoor events to look forward to, in Birmingham and Sutton respectively, and is in training to defend his outdoor English Schools title which will take place in Gateshead in July.

An all-round athlete, he was part of the Whitgift U15 rugby squad which recently reached the quarter-finals of the Daily Mail National Schools' Rugby Cup and is an academy footballer at Charlton Athletic.

His professed role models, though, are triple jumpers Phillips Idowu and Teddy Tamgho.