IT was the playground boast that could never be topped. While others bragged about their fathers’ prowess on the football field or perhaps a fancy new car, Damon Sansum always had a winning retort: my dad’s a bodyguard and he knows karate and kickboxing.

Unlike many childhood claims, this one was entirely true. Sansum, one of the Sunday Herald’s Six to Follow on the road to the Rio Olympics, is his own man now as he looks to climb the taekwondo rankings – he is rated third in the world in the 80kg category – but he has never forgotten the influence of his father, Lee, who has guided him every step of the way.

Sansum Sr has quite a back story himself. A 7th Dan who runs a martial arts academy in the north of Scotland, Lee has also served as a personal bodyguard to several high-profile figures including Princess Diana shortly before her death, and Alex Salmond during the independence referendum last year.

Unsurprisingly it was Lee who introduced his son to martial arts, the Manchester-based Scot initially excelling in kickboxing before moving on to taekwondo. Damon now has his own coaching team who he works with closely but barely a day goes by when he doesn’t pick up the phone for some fatherly advice.

“When you’re young, being able to tell people your dad is a bodyguard is pretty cool,” says the 28-year-old. “That always got a good reaction from the other kids. When I went to live with him when I was 11, I didn’t know much about it all but he told me about his training and at what level he did martial arts.

“When he started teaching me I soon realised just how good he was. It became like a family business as I help him out and he has trained me since I was young. So it’s always been about family for me. Your dad being the local martial arts master has always been a fun thing to tell people.

“He’s not my coach now but I still speak to him every day. We’re really close. I value his opinion so when I come back from a tournament we’ll have a look at my fights and he’ll give me some tips. But mostly it’s about life advice as he’s always got some useful words of wisdom. I’ll listen and sometimes there’ll be a lightbulb-above-the-head moment when it all makes sense. Now I’m older I know everything he told me when I was growing up is right; I was just a bit stubborn as a kid and didn’t always listen.”

The pursuit of excellence often requires substantial sacrifices. Such is his determination to succeed at the Olympics, that Damon rarely takes time off from his strict training regime. There have been offers to model following an appearance on the TV show Take Me Out – he has cultivated a rather extensive beard as is the trend among young fellows these days – but for the time being he has had to sadly decline.

“After I was on Take Me Out, a modelling agency scouted me and I went down and did my portfolio with them,” added Sansum, who is looking for Scottish companies to sponsor him on the road to Rio.

“But because of the nature of taekwondo training we don’t really get any time off. If you start taking time off then it affects your training and your performances, and for me taekwondo is my focal point. For a bit of money here and there it’s not worth sacrificing that.

“I was asked to go down to London to shoot a Southern Comfort advert. It was good money and it would have meant going to Prague for four days, so that would have been exciting but it was right before the European Championships so I had to say I couldn’t go. I have two or three training sessions a day and then there are meetings between sessions with my coach so it’s long days and very physically demanding, too. You’re crawling out of the gym come Friday.”

There was an unexpected bump on the journey to Brazil at the recent Grand Prix event in Moscow when Sansum failed to reach the latter stages of the competition. But after an other- wise positive start to the year – he has won a medal in every other event – he is not too disheartened as he turns his focus to next month’s Grand Prix in the Turkish town of, funnily enough, Samsun.

“Emotionally, it’s only natural to feel a bit deflated after a defeat given all the hard work you’ve put in,” he said. “But you soon learn you have to take the ups with the downs as sometimes things just go against you for whatever reason. I’ve managed to become more consistent these past 12 months which is a big step forward. In elite sport you have no time to dwell on the past. You just have to move on to the next one. It’s actually in a place called Samsun – spelt slightly different to my surname – so if the gods are shining on me, it will be a good one to win.”

Damon can be found on Twitter @DamonSansum and on Instagram at damonsansum