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Australia appear to have a sprinter of real promise on their hands. If Gout Gout’s stock was already rapidly on the rise after his exploits as a teenage athletic phenom, his latest record-breaking exploits have marked him out as a potential superstar of the sport.
Still only 16, Gout entered the 2024 Australian All Schools Athletics Championships in Queensland as the headline attraction, an individual whose reputation belies his youth. How would he handle the pressure? The answer was delivered emphatically in the boys 100m heats as Gout surged to a wind-assisted 10.04secs, the fourth fastest time in history for an under 18 achieved 13 months before the teenager enters adulthood.
While that tailwind rendered his effort ineligible for the record books, his 10.17secs in the final was licit and legitimate. If that leaves Gout only sixth on the all-time list, a stuttering start suggests that there is plenty more to come. Patrick Johnson holds the Australian 100m record of 9.93secs set in 2003 at a meet in Japan and is the only man from the country to run a sub-10 second 100m; it surely won’t be long before Gout is threatening that mark.
The son of South Sudanese immigrants, the 16-year-old was born near Brisbane two years after his parents settled in Queensland as the third of seven children. A student of Ipswich Grammar School, it wasn’t long before coach Di Sheppard identified an athlete of sky-high potential.
“I saw him running on the oval and there was just something about him and the way he moved,” she recalled of first seeing Gout as a 13-year-old in The Guardian. “I couldn’t pinpoint it, but gut instinct just screamed at me: who’s that kid?”
The success has followed appropriately quickly. As a 14-year-old, Gout was already topping the times of leading Australian athletes two years his senior; at 15, the 200m U18 record was claimed.
In August, he went to the World U20 Championships and secured a silver medal. Adidas soon handed the youngster his first contract to spark a sponsorship that may last long into his senior career. Then, at the Queensland All-Schools Championships in the first weekend of November, Gout clocked a time of 20.29secs in the heats – in the world all-time youth performance rankings, only Thai prodigy Puripol Boonson, America’s Erriyon Knighton and a certain Usain Bolt have ever run faster.
And there is still time yet for the Australian to better that mark, starting on Saturday when he runs over a distance that some feel suits him better at the schools event in Brisbane.
Comparisons with Bolt have come naturally, with Gout sharing plenty of similarities in style with the Jamaican – though the Queenslander is keen to forge his own reputation. “I do see it [the Bolt similarity],” Gout admitted to Ninewhen asked about the comparisons. “My stride length is pretty long, my knee height is pretty high and just the amount of tallness I get when I’m running.
“I’m just me trying to be me. Obviously, I do run like him. I do sometimes look like him, but obviously I’m making a name for myself, and I think I’ve done that pretty well. I just want to continue doing that and continue to be not only Usain Bolt but continue to be Gout Gout.”
In January, Gout intends to join up with Lance Brauman, the pioneering coach who has moulded Noah Lyles into an Olympic and world champion. “Hopefully we can qualify for the Tokyo World Championships,” an ambitious Gout said after victory on Friday, before producing a reminder of just how young he remains. “If not, I’ll just finish my school in Year 12.” Australia’s sprint pair Rohan Browning and Joshua Azzopardi both participated in round one at the Paris Olympics and were knocked out with times of 10.20secs and 10.29secs respectively; Gout is already bettering those marks and could contend as soon as LA2028.
The immediate ambitions are clear, then, but there is reason for excitement in the longer term. The 2032 Olympics are set to be held in Gout’s home city of Brisbane. Come the event, Gout will be 25 and theoretically right in his prime – it’s early to mark out a teenager as a Cathy Freeman-esque face of the Games but this sprinting starlet appears to be on the right track.
