Olympic Games / Prospects for Gold: Dodson is ripe for reward: A boy from Brooklyn carries hopes of British success in the Olympic Games: Harry Lansdown on the boxer aiming to set the record straight in Barcelona

NO BRITISH boxer has won a gold medal at the Olympic Games since Chris Finnegan took the middleweight title in Mexico City in 1968. But this frustrating record could soon be broken: a 21-year-old who learnt his trade in Brooklyn and who has won a coveted American boxing prize will represent Britain at welterweight in Barcelona next week.

Adrian Dodson was born in 1970 in British Guyana. Orphaned as a baby, his adoptive parents took him to Brooklyn, but he also had spells in London. As this cosmopolitan upbringing denied him a stable home life and fragmented his education, so in boxing he found, and clung on to, a thread of continuity.

Dodson began boxing at the age of four, in Guyana. His family there were related to a Commonwealth champion, Lennox Blackmore, who fought Aaron Pryor for the world lightweight title in 1981. Dodson used to go and watch Blackmore in the gym. 'I watched him hit the punch bag and I went home, got a plastic bag, and filled it up with sand. But I kept popping it open when I hit it, so Lennox invited me to the gym, and from there I became his kind of mascot.'

At seven, Dodson, lying about his age, won an Under-10s junior tournament in Guyana. From there, he went to New York and began training at the Bedford Stuyvesant boxing club in Brooklyn, frequented by fighters including the former world welterweight champion, Mark Breland, and the current heavyweight contender, Riddick Bowe.

While Breland was training for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, he became Dodson's mentor. 'He used to zap me up in the morning and take me running with him. I think I was a kind of outlet for him and I took in everything he told me. We used to run in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, along the horse track. Your feet sunk in the mud and it smelt, but Mark said it helped your balance in the ring.'

It is this experience of training and also sparring with leading professionals which sets Dodson apart from his British counterparts. While it is against boxing regulations in Britain for amateurs to spar with professionals, in the United States it is considered essential for their development.

Dodson represented Guyana as a light-welterweight at Seoul, where, as a 17-year-old, he lost a split decision in the quarter-finals to a West German opponent, Reiner Gies. Losing then has given him invaluable experience for a second attempt. 'At the end he pulled my head down, on the blind side of the referee, and I got penalised. That won't happen to me again.' Dodson has not lost since; he holds a record of 150 victories against three defeats, and he has never been put down or counted out.

He has taken British citizenship because, he says, it is where 'I have always found a sense of morality, and people who care for me'. Yet his language is littered with American-style phrases. 'I'll do anything not to be a loser in life. Period,' he says. 'We're all born in the same gutter, only some of us look up at the stars.'

A period of inactivity last year included a peculiar disqualification from the 1991 ABA Championships when Dodson was ruled out for leaving the building without medical permission. In spite of this, the ABA selected him to box in Barcelona, but at welterweight rather than at his preferred light-middle. 'Having to keep to 10 stone seven has forced me to really learn about my body,' he said. He is as obsessive about his diet as he is about his training and his study of boxing fight videos.

Dodson dismisses talk about personal boxing qualities, stepping aside from compliments about reputedly fast hands, and a southpaw stance which he can switch if necessary. 'You come up against a guy with the same weapons as you and then it's all about desire. Boxing to me is 90 per cent mental.'

The question is, does his cheek and maturity underpin a supreme talent, or will he be found wanting when confronted by a top opponent? The facts speak for themselves: on one side of the Atlantic, 1990 national ABA champion, plus a defeat of Michael Ryl, a world junior silver medallist, on his debut for London against Berlin. On the other, New York Golden Gloves champion in 1989, and significantly, winner of the Sugar Ray Robinson Award for the outstanding boxer of the tournament.

He leaves with a crisp warning, his inviting smile disappearing. 'I'm not going to do a Mike Tyson and say nobody on the planet can beat me, but anyone who is going to defeat me in Olympic competition has to want it really badly. I hope they're ready because I sure am.'

(Photograph omitted)