Gout Gout already has already put the athletics world on notice with his astonishingly quick times seeing him compared to sprint icon Usain Bolt, and the Australian youngster hit yet another milestone this week
Australian sprinting sensation Gout Gout has hit back after being defeated by his compatriot Lachlan Kennedy, by beating the 10-second barrier for the 100 metres, not once, but twice on the same day.
However, Gout’s stunning time of 9.99, coming at the Australian Athletics Championships in Perth on Thursday, was clocked with a tailwind that was considered illegal, and therefore won’t go into the official record books.
While his first-round heat in the Under-20 men’s category was ruled out, he later repeated the feat in the final later on. Yet that dash also branded as an illegal sprint.
Only runs with a 2m/second tailwind or less are considered legal, and the 3.5m/s tailwind for the heat meant Gout’s first career sub 10-second run didn’t count. The tailwind during the final was 2.6m/s.
His emphatic response on the track came as Gout’s 200m run of 20.30s wasn’t enough to beat Kennedy, 21, at the Pete Norman Memorial in Melbourne at the end of March. The 60m specialist was in sublime form as he blitzed the race in 20.26s, to take the gold.
However, Gout’s reply at Perth is telling, with the youngster already acclaimed for breaking Usain Bolt’s record for the fastest time in the 200 metres by a 16-year-old.
Gout’s official personal best in the 100m remains at 10.17 seconds, however at just 17 years, three months, and 13 days old there is expectation that he could break yet another of Bolt’s times.
Bolt broke the 100m barrier on May 3, 2008, when he clocked 9.76 seconds at a meet in Jamaica, when he was 21 years, 256 days old.
Yet with Gout already running 9.99 and being significantly younger than Bolt was when he eclipsed the barrier, it’s likely that, should the youngster keep up his stunning form, he could well topple another of the iconic Jamaican’s records.
The current youngest to do it is US athlete Christian Miller who stormed to time of 9.93 at the Pure Athletics Spring Invitational in Clermont, Florida in April 2024 when he was 17 years, 11 months, and 5 days, meaning Gout still has a short amount of time to become the youngest ever to come in under 100m.
Should he pull it off, on an official basis, it means he would become just the second Australian to do so. Patrick Johnson was the first, clocking 9.93sec in Japan back in 2003, however, Johnson was 30-years-old at the time of smashing the barrier.
Despite his astonishing achievement, the youngster couldn’t hide his disappointment that two runs were ruled out. “It doesn’t feel very special,” he said.
“I mean, this is the stuff you have to do to get to the next level. Sub 10 was inevitable. Sometimes it’s frustrating, but you can’t control what you can’t control, and the wind is something you can’t control.”
Even if Gout doesn’t manage it there is a belief that several young Australian sprinters are about to announce themselves in a major way on the world stage when it comes to the 100m.
Alongside Gout and Kennedy, Paris Olympics semi-finalist Rohan Browning, 27, who has clocked 10.01, 19-year-old Sebastian Sultana, 10.11, and Joshua Azzopardi, 25, who has came in at 10.06 are all seen as leading contenders to smash the barrier and bring the country to the forefront of sprinting.
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