When hardships pile up, Jaydyn Coggins gets stacking.

The Adelaide-based teenager, who has jumped over many hurdles in life, is travelling the world with a unique “superpower”.

Jaydyn can stack and unstack 12 cups in just over five seconds.

The pros call it sport stacking and he is the national champion you’ve probably never heard of – until now.

Born at 24 weeks and given a 25 per cent chance of survival, the speedster was innately drawn to the pursuit before he even knew it was a sport.

“I started randomly,” the now 18-year-old told AAP as he prepares for the world titles, to be held online early next month.

“I was about six years old and I saw the cups there and I thought ‘I’ll just stack them’, then I rediscovered it when I was nine.

“I asked mum and (stepfather) Adam to buy me a set of cups and I’ve been basically stacking ever since.”

The niche sport, which has its own international body, involves competitors stacking and unstacking cups into pyramids across three events: The 3-3-3, 3-6-3 and cycle.

Jaydyn has autism and partly credits the condition for his insatiable urge to shave milliseconds off his personal best, in-tournament cycle time of 5.440 seconds.

“It’s given me a few superpowers, so to speak,” Jaydyn said.

“It’s definitely helped me because my love of numbers drove me to be one of the best and then my stats-loving self put me into even more of a hyperdrive.”

By 13, he won his first national crown and in 2015 started his globetrotting adventures to test himself against the world’s quickest stackers.

Jaydyn Coggins, 18, is training for the international cup stacking championships. He’s already the national champ. Photo: AAP

The pursuit hasn’t come cheap, with mum Rachel Flierl estimating the cost of their overseas trips to be about $50,000.

To help supplement travel costs and to keep sharp – with no national competition running since 2017 – the wunderkind would busk in Adelaide’s Rundle Mall.

Many of the open-mouthed onlookers couldn’t make heads nor tails of it.

“I’ve seen so many people keep walking and walking into a tree,” Ms Flierl said.

“Some people don’t even think it’s a sport either; some people think he’s doing magic.”

More recently, the international stacking circuit has been forced online with the COVID-19 pandemic closing overseas borders.

It has presented a new series of challenges to the Australian hope, who is up all hours of the night for competitions in the United States and United Kingdom.

Before the borders snapped shut, Jaydyn flew to Florida for the 2018 World Sport Stacking Championships.

Just 15 at the time, his title tilt is the focus of an hour-long documentary to premiere on ABC Plus this Wednesday at 9.30pm.

Jaydyn hopes the program will raise awareness of sport stacking and prompt more people to give it a go.

-AAP