It was the best head-to-head sprint in Australia in decades, but it was like two completely different races by two completely different sprinters, who happened to be on the same track.
Kennedy started faster. Gout was faster in the middle. Gout reached a faster top speed. Kennedy held higher speed at the end. In the end, a whisker separated them; just 0.04 seconds.
Gout was the headline act, the schoolboy prodigy the world wanted to see. He was the kid with the beaming smile who seemed to do something more freakish every time he ran, ticking off records like items on a tuckshop order form.
This was to be the night he really introduced himself to athletics. Although he’d run 10.03s for the 100m in December, and broken Peter Norman’s 200m record that had stood for half a century the next day, that was at the national schools championships. While it was a national stage, it still had a school sports feel to it, with sparse but shrill crowds at a small track on Brisbane’s suburban fringe, just around the corner from his home.
But last month’s Maurie Plant meeting in Melbourne was against men. There was a sold-out crowd, it was live on TV, and he was the headline act with fireworks and a light show announcing his entrance.
A grand entrance for Gout Gout.Credit: Getty Images
But it was also the night Lachie Kennedy, just 21 himself, entrenched his name. He had won a world indoor medal over 60m, but that was esoteric compared with Gout’s achievements. He was Australia’s fastest man over the shortest distance, but hardly anyone knew or cared. It was all about Gout. Until this night, when Kennedy demanded the world learn his name.
He won the 100m, then upstaged Gout in the 200m headline act.
Within that showdown, Gout and Kennedy’s races could not have been more different because as racers they could not be more different. As they prepare to race again at the Australian Athletics Championships in Perth this weekend, let’s compare the two sprinters using detailed data.
The start (50 metre mark: Kennedy 5.88s, Gout 6.00s)
Kennedy is shorter and chunkier. Consequently, his running is all power. In training, he performs “quarter lifts” in the gym – this involves standing at a gym rack, putting a heavy weight on his shoulders and, from a standing position, dropping a short distance before surging upwards as quickly as possible. He does it quickly six times.
Kennedy lifts 300 kilos doing these quarter squats. That’s like lifting a polar bear, if you were of a mind to lift a polar bear.
“The bars can barely handle the weight, though the other day he did six reps of 320kg, but he didn’t film it,” his coach Andrew Iselin said.
“I was talking to a friend from the UK who worked with [former world champion] Linford Christie, and he said that is Linford Christie sort of levels.” Christie was renowned for his power.
“It gives him a good start, but it is also the strength he has to hold his positions.”
Gout, by contrast, is taller and rangy, with more sinew than muscle. His coach Di Sheppard told this masthead in December, Gout’s Achilles are as tight as guitar strings, so he has had trouble setting himself on the blocks. It has been a gradual process to lengthen his starting position. She knows his starts will only improve with more suppleness and time. He is only 17 and growing into his body.
It felt as if Kennedy exploded out of the blocks and Gout was slow. Which is right, but the splits suggest it was far closer than the eye suggested. Still, in a race decided by four hundredths of a second, it was effectively won and lost in those first metres.
Kennedy ran his first 50 metres in 5.88 seconds, Gout did it in six seconds flat. With the stagger start, it was hard to work out who had the better position as they ran into the bend. Despite running into a slight headwind, they both dropped their times through the bend. Kennedy ran 4.6s for the second 50m block to Gout’s 4.58s.
The middle of the race (100m mark: Kennedy 10.48s, Gout 10.58s)
This graph shows that both runners’ average speeds peak between 50 and 100 metres – Gout at 10.92 metres per second, Kennedy at 10.87 metres per second.
“I did think the headwind on the bend would work in Lachie’s favour just because he is muscly and he actually did a bit better than I thought he would. But I also thought Gout would run a bit slower on the bend because of the headwind, but Gout ran that bend well,” Iselin said.
“It [the first 100m] was actually a lot more similar than I thought on the night. I think it was probably Gout’s fastest ever bend. He was only 0.1s behind Lachie after the first 100m which was much closer than most would have thought.”
What Gout did after that was remarkable. He is already renowned for “slingshotting” off the bend; when he winds into the straight he starts to stride out. Here, he cranked up his speed again 130 metres into the race.
Gout’s point of difference is his long stride.Credit: Getty Images
Between the 100m and 130m marks he ran at an average speed of 10.42 metres per second but then for the next 20m cranked up to 10.64m/s. At the same time his stride length stretched out to 2.71m. By contrast, the stockier Kennedy’s stride never stretched beyond 2.34m.
This is Gout’s point of difference. He has long legs and a long stride. The funny thing is he is not that tall, but he looks it the way he runs. He’s 182 centimetres; a touch under six feet. He has been likened to Usain Bolt for his running style and feats at a similar age, but the Jamaican is 195cm. Gout does have relatively long legs compared with his torso.
His tight Achilles also give him strength and stiffness in his feet when he runs, which sends biomechanists and athletics nerds gushing about the spring he can generate.
The finish (Kennedy 20.26s, Gout 20.30s)
The impression watching the race live was that, with a few more metres, Gout would have got Kennedy. The numbers suggest that’s no sure thing.
While Gout surged in the middle stage of the race, reached a much higher top speed and was far quicker up to the 180m mark, in the final 20m his speed dropped away compared with Kennedy, who was running at 9.62m/s to Gout’s 9.52m/s.
The first 50m and the last 20m probably speak most to the difference in age and strength between the pair. Gout is 17, Kennedy is 21 and lifting polar bears. One has a man’s build, the other was still doing double maths at school on the Friday.
Iselin walked away from the race bullish about both runners and what they can do in the favourable conditions they are likely to have in Perth on Sunday.
Kennedy and Gout hit the line.Credit: Getty Images
“If they both do that in good conditions they could both legally go 19s,” Iselin said.
Gout and Kennedy get on well and speak enthusiastically about each other. It’s a racing rivalry, but a friendly one.
It sets up an exciting return race in Perth, but that is a secondary concern for Kennedy, and the rematch might not happen in the final.
“Coming into this weekend, our main focus is still the 100m, it’s always going to be the target,” Iselin explains.
“Run the 100m, try to break 10 seconds for that, and then evaluate what we do after that for the 200m, considering he has so much coming up. He has the Stawell Gift next week then he is pretty much straight off to China after that. We’ll see how he pulls up after the 100m.
“There’s a chance he may not run the 200m final. He may just go out there and blitz it in the 200m heat and we will call it there … Lachie always wants to race, and he was talking today about how he is going to run both because his body is obviously feeling alright, so if he thinks he can do it, he is going to definitely do both.”
