The second half of Gout Gout’s 200-metre, record-breaking race on Sunday was well under 10 seconds and quicker than Usain Bolt ran his final 100m when he broke the world record.
Not the junior world record, the senior one.
Comparisons between Gout and Bolt will become odious, if they haven’t already, but presently they are unavoidable. Bolt is the only sprinter to fairly measure Gout against as a junior.
There will be a point where we stop benchmarking everything he does against Bolt, but it isn’t now.
The second 100m of Gout’s 19.67-second national title run in Sydney was faster than the second 100 that Bolt ran for his 19.19s world record – the open age one – in Berlin at the world championships in 2009.
Gout ran 9.24s down the straight for his second 100m on Sunday. Bolt in Berlin ran 9.27s for his second 100m. Of course, that means the Jamaican also ran 9.92s around the bend for the first 100m in Germany.
For further perspective on Bolt, he was the first person to break 10 seconds running the 100m around the bend. Splits in athletics are not as readily available as in swimming, so if there have been others running sub 10 around the bend, such as maybe Yohan Blake or Michael Johnson, we are unaware of them.
If you break Gout’s race down further and paint by numbers, you can see how he races.
Gout’s routine when he drops to the blocks is so familiar now: both feet in the blocks, both knees to the ground, lean down puts his head to the track, small sign of the cross, across his face, then puts one of his two gold crucifixes on chains in his mouth.
We’ve seen it all so many times now that it seems normal, but his starting set-up is not that common. Gout crouches in an American style, putting both knees on the ground.
Stretching out his young body has been a long, multi-year process for his coach Di Sheppard, since she started coaching him in junior school at Ipswich Grammar. Gout’s Achilles are guitar-string tight, such that he would almost fall on his face when he first started trying to crouch at the blocks. Instead, he began dropping both knees to feel more stable.
His body has needed constant stretching to loosen up his Achilles and calves and he is still building size and power to his backside and upper legs.
The tightness in his Achilles is part of the reason for his relatively slow starts. But plainly the work they have done is having an effect.
How the race played out
Gout’s reaction was good. He comes out sharply, quickly, with good power and rises fairly quickly out of that first drive phase.
Calab Law and Aidan Murphy on his inside lanes started even stronger, and moved up on him in the stagger quite quickly.
Gout’s first 50 metres was 5.95s. Once he rounded the tightest part of the bend, he really stretched his stride out. His second 50m took just 4.48s, but still didn’t have him leading the race and in fact Murphy had him covered until halfway down the home straight.
Gout is renowned, as Bolt was, for his long stride, creating a slingshot effect coming out of the bend.
Gout’s third 50m was timed at 4.52s. His final 50, as he was cruising and striding out, was 4.72s.
This is the deceptive thing about sprinters: it looks like Gout was accelerating past Murphy and away from Law. He wasn’t.
A sprint is about who can slow the slowest. That is, who can get to their top speed the quickest, hold that speed the longest and tire the slowest.
Gout was able to, relatively, tire and slow down to the line slower than the field. So while it looked like he was speeding up, he was actually just not slowing down as quickly as everyone else.
Gout crossed the line and checked two sets of numbers. The time, and the wind. They were, as Paul Keating would have said, a beautiful set of numbers.
The time was 19.67s and the wind was a legal +1.7 metres per second and just under the +2mps threshold for being too helpful. Perfect.
Before the race, Gout thought he was in shape to run 19.75. He was wrong. He had to content himself with being faster.
Gout is seldom wrong with his predictions.
In an interview with The Age and Herald Sun in December 2024, the day before his record-breaking runs at the Queensland All Schools championships, he said of his plans: “There are stepping stones we wish to complete, so the first will obviously be the Peter Norman [national 200m] record, 20.06s.”
He broke it the next day.
“And after that just getting faster and obviously the big milestone is sub-20s. And after that, just keep getting faster.
“Sub-10 [seconds for the 100m] will definitely happen.”
That was less than 18 months ago, which is part of the extraordinary trajectory of Gout. He is ticking off career-defining milestones by the month, not the year.
His other prediction was that he would win the Olympic sprint gold double in Brisbane at the 2032 Olympics. It was a goal, but for Gout goals and predictions have become one and the same. You would not doubt him.
News, results and expert analysis from the weekend of sport sent every Monday. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.
Michael Gleeson is an award-winning senior sports writer specialising in AFL and athletics.Connect via X or email.