Brisbane: Gout Gout was never not going to win, running against Australian schoolboys just months after coming second to the best in the world.
But this wasn’t about whether he’d win. This was about what time the schoolboy star could run. And his time in a heat on day one of the Australian All-Schools Championships in Queensland was simply breathtaking.
Gout ran 10.04 seconds for the 100 metres to win the under-18 race easily. Yes, the tailwind was just too strong (+3.4) for it to be considered a legal time, but that was slightly inconsequential.
Gout still had to roll his legs over at that pace. The wind meant Seb Sultana’s 10.27s under-18 national record was safe. For now.
But this was only a heat. And in the hot and gusty conditions at QSAC Stadium, this was a run that franked Gout’s status as the most exciting athlete in the country.
Gout embraces the hype around him, and performances like these as the world continues to tune in and scrutinise him only intensify the interest in the Brisbane sprinter.
Gout and his coach Di Sheppard had been comfortable in stating that their longer-term plan for Gout, from the time he began working with her from year 7 onwards, was for him to win double gold at the Brisbane Olympics.
Gout remember is only 16 – he turns 17 on the 29th of this month – and is galloping ahead of where he and Sheppard thought he would be.
Patrick Johnson remains the only Australian to legally break the 10-second barrier when he ran 9.93s in Japan in 2003.
Australia’s sprint star Rohan Browning, an Olympic semi-finalist, has a personal best of 10.01s. He broke 10 seconds when he ran 9.96s for the 100m at Wollongong in 2021, but he, too, had an illegal tailwind that day (+3.4), so the time was not official.
He runs the final of the 100m at 4.40pm Friday, AEDT. He will run the 200m on Saturday.
More to come
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