Gout will pause his year 12 studies to take on the world. Here’s what to expect

1 week ago 4

This is Gout Gout’s free hit. It will probably be his only one.

This is Australia’s teenage sprinting phenomenon’s first chance to race the world’s fastest men while he is still a boy.

Gout Gout wins at the Ostrava Golden Spike event in June. Then he went back to high school.

This is also the world’s chance to see Gout. The 17-year-old is the fascination of world athletics, not just an Australian preoccupation. He is Australia’s great hope, and a great wonder to the rest of the world.

Who is this kid doing Bolt-like things? The world athletics championships, which start in Tokyo next Saturday, are the first chance to see Gout live against the world’s best and Australia’s chance to see performance collide with hope, and hype.

Betting company TAB is embracing the delusional hype. This week they were paying $21 for Gout to win the final of his pet event, the 200m, in which he is the national record holder.

Not make the final, win it. They have him $4.50 to finish top three. Again, not in his heat or even in the semi; they are taking odds on him being on the podium after the final. Look, we wish Gout well, but even his most ardent backer would figure those odds more than a little short.

For Gout Gout, getting out of the heats at the world championships would be an impressive achievement.

People get excited for freaks in sport. What Gout has done is freakish - he has run quicker than Usain Bolt did as a 16 and 18-year-old. Gout took Bolt’s junior world records. We all know what Bolt became, so the hype around Gout is fuelled by the hope he can replicate even a modicum of what the Jamaican great went on to achieve.

And, hopefully, he can. Certainly, he has been undaunted at each new step up in age, class and quality he has faced - last year he won silver at the world junior championships, losing to an athlete 18 months older than him.

But it is worth recalling that Bolt’s junior performances didn’t translate to achievement in major world championships when he was still a teen.

This year while the world’s fastest runners were training full-time, Gout was doing year 12.

When he set a new personal best time of 20.02 seconds for the 200m, in the Czech city of Ostrava in June, he did it during a quick racing and training jaunt to Europe during school holidays. It was his first senior race against some of the world’s best men. His rivals went back to training; he went back to Ipswich Grammar.

That he set a PB while doing year 12 is a wonder in itself. That he did it after flying to the other side of the world as a 17-year-old for a short break to race against men is a bigger comment on what is achievable for Gout when he finishes school and trains full-time.

Early this year Gout spent weeks in the US training with Noah Lyles, the man who has won the past two 200m world titles, and the Olympic 100m champion. The connection was through their joint sponsor adidas, but the training session was an instructive reminder that while Gout is a phenomenon, when he went to the US to train he was like a work experience kid.

The rest of the world knows Gout getting out of his heat in Tokyo would be a good result. Top five in his semi would be to do extraordinarily well. Making the final? Forgeddaboudit.

Why? This isn’t swimming, this is athletics. They compete in an, ahem, deeper pool of talent. Everyone in the world runs, not everyone swims. Europeans, Americans, Africans, Asians (a Japanese kid just broke the world under-16 record when he ran 10 seconds flat for the 100m) all sprint and will be in Tokyo.

This is not to diminish the achievements of Australian swimmers, who have made us accustomed to leaving major championships with hauls of gold. But aths is different.

Twenty other athletes qualified faster than Gout for the worlds. Gout had to run his best time to qualify; many others just repeated what they have done many times before to qualify. They are bigger, stronger and more experienced than him … for now.

“To just get out of the heat would be a fantastic effort from Gout in that event,” Australian Athletics general manager of high performance Andrew Faichney said.

“He is only 17. When Usain Bolt went to the ’04 Olympics as a teenager he didn’t get out of his heat. To make a semi-final in a 200 which is one of the most competitive events in the world, very few 17-year-olds have ever done that.

Gout has drawn some comparisons to the greatest sprinter of them all, Jamaican icon Usain Bolt (pictured).

“Gout has been training and preparing himself while he has also been studying but the others have been in the Diamond Leagues each week and racing which is a very different sort of preparation.

“Whether or not he gets out of the heat or out of a semi it is just incredible experience for him and what he can become as an athlete. It certainly does not change how exciting a prospect he is.”

As phenomenal as Gout’s performances have been he has still only run the 18th quickest time in the world this year. But he has done that as a 17-year-old. That is the reason for the hype and expectation not the idea - despite the betting odds - of what he might do in Tokyo.

Lyles ran the quickest time in the world in the last 12 months when he ran 19.63 in Oregon. Six of the 10 quickest times this year have been run by Americans, but mercifully only three can be on the US team in Tokyo.

Gout will pause his VCE studies to compete at the world championships.

In 2021, American teenager Erriyon Knighton ran 19.84s to break Usain Bolt’s world under-18 200m record. Gout has since also run quicker than Bolt’s 20.13s that he ran as an under-18, but he has not yet beaten Knighton’s time.

A year later Knighton also broke Bolt’s world under-20 record when he ran 19.49 seconds, lowering Bolt’s time of 19.93s. Knighton’s time as a 19-year-old was the sixth-fastest time a man of any age had run. This year Knighton didn’t make the American team.

Knighton was the new big thing when he burst on the scene, beating Bolt’s times. He didn’t draw the comparisons in gait and style that Gout draws, but his times were breathtaking. In the last few years, since those precocious teen efforts, he has not taken the next step.

Knighton is facing a doping ban for a positive test, which he said came from eating contaminated ox tail. Last year he was allowed to run at the Paris Olympics because the US doping authority accepted his explanation. WADA didn’t and have taken the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

The doping ban, if upheld, will inevitably cast a degree of doubt over Knighton’s earlier performances and only enhance the feats of Gout this year.

Knighton won’t be in Tokyo. But Gout will. The world awaits.

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