Who is Gout Gout? Australia’s 16-year-old sprint sensation breaking records

Australia have a dash sensation. If Gout Gout’s inventory was already quickly on the rise after his exploits as a teenage athletic phenom, his newest record-breaking exploits have marked him out as a possible famous person of the game within the males’s ranks.

Nonetheless solely 16, Gout entered the 2024 Australian All Colleges Athletics Championships in Queensland because the headline attraction, a person whose repute belies his youth. How would he deal with the strain? The reply was delivered emphatically within the boys 100m heats as Gout surged to a wind-assisted 10.04secs, the fourth quickest time in historical past for an below 18 achieved 13 months earlier than {the teenager} enters maturity.

Whereas that tailwind rendered his effort ineligible for the report books, his 10.17secs within the closing was licit and bonafide. If that leaves Gout solely sixth on the all-time record, a stuttering begin suggests that there’s loads extra to come back. Patrick Johnson holds the Australian 100m report of 9.93secs set in 2003 at a meet in Japan and is the one man from the nation to run a sub-10 second 100m; it certainly received’t be lengthy earlier than Gout is threatening that mark.

And if that Australian report is to come back, the 200m mark was snatched with a sensational run a day later: His run of 20.04 seconds took Peter Norman’s 56-year report of 20.07 seconds. A brief wait, with the clock frozen simply exterior the report, supplied some suspense and drama, earlier than Gout collapsed on his again in celebration when his new time was confirmed.

Gout’s new shiny private greatest would have seen him end fifth within the senior World Championships in Budapest final yr, making his astonishing rise much more spectacular along with his greatest years forward.

The son of South Sudanese immigrants, the 16-year-old was born close to Brisbane two years after his mother and father settled in Queensland because the third of seven kids. A pupil of Ipswich Grammar Faculty, it wasn’t lengthy earlier than coach Di Sheppard recognized an athlete of sky-high potential.

“I noticed him working on the oval and there was simply one thing about him and the best way he moved,” she recalled of first seeing Gout as a 13-year-old in The Guardian. “I couldn’t pinpoint it, however intestine intuition simply screamed at me: who’s that child?”

The success has adopted appropriately rapidly. As a 14-year-old, Gout was already topping the occasions of main Australian athletes two years his senior; at 15, the 200m U18 report was claimed.

In August, he went to the World U20 Championships and secured a silver medal. Adidas quickly handed the teen his first contract to spark a sponsorship which will final lengthy into his senior profession. Then, on the Queensland All-Colleges Championships within the first weekend of November, Gout clocked a time of 20.29secs within the heats – on this planet all-time youth efficiency rankings, solely Thai prodigy Puripol Boonson, America’s Erriyon Knighton and a sure Usain Bolt had ever run quicker on the time. Now simply Knighton is forward, on 19.84secs as an Below-18 athlete, with Gout’s private greatest nine-hundredths of a second quicker than the legendary Bolt’s greatest effort on the similar age class.

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Comparisons with the Jamaican have come naturally, with Gout sharing loads of similarities in fashion with the Jamaican – although the Queenslander is eager to forge his personal repute. “I do see it [the Bolt similarity],” Gout admitted to 9 when requested concerning the comparisons. “My stride size is fairly lengthy, my knee top is fairly excessive and simply the quantity of tallness I get once I’m working.

“I’m simply me making an attempt to be me. Clearly, I do run like him. I do generally appear to be him, however clearly I’m making a reputation for myself, and I feel I’ve performed that fairly properly. I simply wish to proceed doing that and proceed to be not solely Usain Bolt however proceed to be Gout Gout.”

In January, Gout intends to hitch up with Lance Brauman, the pioneering coach who has moulded Noah Lyles into an Olympic and world champion. “Hopefully we are able to qualify for the Tokyo World Championships,” an bold Gout mentioned after victory on Friday, earlier than producing a reminder of simply how younger he stays. “If not, I’ll simply end my faculty in 12 months 12.” Australia’s dash pair Rohan Browning and Joshua Azzopardi each participated in spherical one on the Paris Olympics and have been knocked out with occasions of 10.20secs and 10.29secs respectively; Gout is already bettering these marks and will contend as quickly as LA2028.

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The instant ambitions are clear, then, however there may be cause for pleasure in the long term. The 2032 Olympics are set to be held in Gout’s house metropolis of Brisbane. Come the occasion, Gout will likely be 25 and theoretically proper in his prime – it’s early to mark out a youngster as a Cathy Freeman-esque face of the Video games however this sprinting starlet seems to be heading in the right direction.