Gout Gout aiming very high for the 200m in Tokyo
John Salvado |
An engaging and intoxicating mix of the ordinary and the absolutely extraordinary, Gout Gout is ready to take the world athletics championships by storm.
The articulate and composed schoolboy superstar didn’t miss a beat in his only pre-race media function on Monday which covered a wide variety of topics over 45 minutes.
Getting name-checked by the legendary Usain Bolt is a huge thrill.
Having a bromance with US sprint superstar Noah Lyles – who he will clash with in the 200m later in the week – is great.
Fame can be crazy – especially when a fan wants you to sign her baby’s forehead.
Much of the material would be familiar to an Australian audience who have come to know the 17-year-old during his extraordinary rise to prominence in the past year.
But the international press pack lapped it up.
Gout’s schoolmates at Ipswich Grammar call him GG or Double G.
He has six siblings and still shares a bedroom with his elder brother.
He drives a modest Hyundai i30 – although you can expect that to be upgraded in the coming years.
His dream 4x100m relay team would comprise Bolt, Lyles, Asafa Powell and Justin Gatlin.
He’s a straight As student and psychology is his favourite Year 12 subject, although it’s perfectly understandable if that takes a back seat to matters on the track at the National Stadium for the next week or so.
He will be the youngest entrant in the 200m in Tokyo as he makes his major senior international debut in the heats on Wednesday under a blaze of publicity.
Gout would love to qualify for the world championships 200m final on Friday – a feat only achieved by three Australian men and none since 2005 – and run a PB in the process.
His current mark stands at 20.02 seconds, so there is a very real prospect of dipping under the magical 20-second barrier in the next few days.
“A PB, regardless of where I come, is definitely a big success,” Gout said at a function hosted by his major sponsor adidas.
“And if I can make it out of the semis then even better. Making it into the final is a big success.”
Seventeen men – headed by multiple Olympic and world champion Lyles with a time of 19.63 seconds – have run sub-20 this year.
Many of them of them will be on the start line in Tokyo.
All of them are more hardened competitors and most of them are bigger and more powerful than Gout, although he’s grown a couple of centimetres this year and put some muscle on what is still a very lean frame.
“It’s about mentally telling myself that I deserve to be here, that I’m the same as everyone else,” he said.
“Obviously my first experience at this level so I’m trying not to put too much pressure on myself.
“But also putting on enough pressure so I can go out there and run very fast and have fun with it.”
Gout could almost certainly have qualified for the 100m in Tokyo too and been a part of the Australian 4x100m relay team.
But his coach Di Sheppard and manager James Templeton are mindful of not rushing things, especially as he balances school with life as a budding professional athlete.
“But it’s definitely both in the long term,” he said.
“The 200 is my baby as people like to say but definitely as I get stronger I’ll get more into the 100.”
Being at the start of what could end up being one of the great Australian sporting careers, it seemed somewhat odd that Gout would be asked on Monday how he would like to be remembered when it was all done.
He even had a good answer for that.
“Definitely being someone people can look at and feel like ‘he was good, he was that guy, he was able to compete for global medals and things of that nature’,” he said.
“Being an inspiration to people older than me, people younger than me, people the same age.
“Being able to be that someone who started off as a nobody and became someone really, really good.”
AAP
