TWO-TIME Olympian Daniel Awde has vowed to be the “people’s champion” after being overlooked for funding by British Athletics bosses – and a south Essex osteopathy clinic has got right behind his mission.

Cedar Hall Clinics, which has bases in Thundersley and Stanford-le-Hope, have unveiled Awde as the latest athlete on their sponsorship programme.

The news has come at the perfect time for Awde who was left disappointed when the latest round of funding was announced by British Athletics last month.

Despite winning a gold medal as part of England’s 4x400m team at the Commonwealth Games and representing Great Britain at the European Team Championships in his first full season as a 400m runner, Awde was not included on the funding list.

But after initial frustration, Awde has vowed to prove his doubters at British Athletics wrong and prove to people that with the right people around you, reaching the very top can still be done without support by the governing body.

“I’ve been telling people I will be the people’s champion,” laughed Awde who went to the 2008 and 2012 Olympics as a decathlete. “I want to show people that you don’t need that (British Athletics funding) to succeed. If you train hard and have the right people around you, you can do it.”

To that end, Awde was delighted when Cedar Hall approached him to offer him their support.

“I was quite taken aback when Sara (Lovett, Cedar Hall director) contacted me and said she and Jacki (Milne, another director) had seen the news about not being on funding and were willing to help by giving me treatments.

“I was quite humbled to be honest that someone was willing  to do that for me  and it takes a worry off my mind. I know that if I do have a problem, then I have somewhere to go.”

Much of Awde’s frustration stems from the fact that he still feels he has great scope for improvement on the track.

He nearly gave up the sport two years ago when, following a devastating experience at the London Olympics – where he was forced to withdraw from the decathlon after just two events – Awde had double knee surgery.

“I wasn’t going to come back to the sport,” he recalls. “It was only after rehabbing that I slowly started to get motivated again and thought I’d give it another go.”

Awde linked up with coach Chris Zah, who guided Perri Shakes-Drayton to the very top of the 400m hurdling world, and set his sights on making it as a 400m runner.

Despite what he described as “blagging it” through last winter, he came out of it in good enough shape to run sub 46 seconds for the first time in Florida in April.

That led to him being called into the Great Britain 4x400m squad for the inaugural World Relay Championships in the Bahamas where frustratingly he wasn’t selected to run.

“That was two weeks I lost. Six days in the Bahamas and recovering from the jet lag. I could have been training then.”

No matter, he was selected to run for GB at the European Team Championships and then clocked a personal best of 45.84s in Loughborough.

He was then part of the memorable England win in the 4x400m relay in Glasgow, with his time of 45.3s the second fastest leg of the quartet.

And then things started to go sour.

He was overlooked for the European Championships and then snubbed when it came to funding.

“It has been frustrating. I ran the second fastest split at the Commonwealths and for them to say I wouldn’t be going to the Europeans was disappointing.

“I’m just 0.3s away from the World Championships qualifying time and I know I have so much more to give. All that I achieved last summer was done off the back of just one winter with Chris. That’s what we are really excited about.”

Despite such strong runs over the flat 400m, Awde has not ruled out focusing his attention on the 400m hurdles in years to come.

He ran 51.99s in the Intercounties Championships at the end of August and feels there is scope for much further improvement there.

“I’m not sure but the great thing is I can train for both because they bounce off each other. The only difference is there are a few hurdles in the way in the 400m hurdles.

“I did a couple of 400m hurdles at the end of last season and they went better than I expected.

“People say you are a decathlete so you must be good at 400m hurdles because you can hurdle and you can move to that but not all decathletes are suited to it, so we’ll see.”