Gout Gout: The 16-year-old Usain Bolt like track star, who is Australia’s next big thing
He’s only 16, but sprinter Gout Gout can’t even walk through school anymore without being mobbed. Australia’s next big Olympic hopeful chats to SCOTT GULLAN about how his family keeps him on a laser-focused path to gold medals.
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It was the matter-of-fact delivery which almost caused the mouthful of water to be dispersed over the table.
Gout Gout is the next big thing in Australian sport. He knows it, the track and field community knows it and the world is getting to know it.
Inside the cafe just around the corner from his Springfield home in Queensland, the 16-year-old is revealing for the first time his incredible story which is so magically entwined with the greatest sprinter in history Usain Bolt.
Gout looks like Bolt when he runs, the long stride and the tall back, it’s scary. And he’s also started beating the Olympic icon’s junior records.
The magical 10-second barrier then comes up in the conversation and given only one Australian – Patrick Johnson back in 2003 – has managed to achieve it, there is a lot of hype about breaking through that 100m mark in this country.
“Sub 10 will definitely happen, yeah,” Gout says casually.
He’s not being arrogant, there is a rock solid confidence about the teenager and even the beginnings of a swagger but in a good way. He sees the sub-10 second achievement as an obvious step along the pathway to being the fastest man in the world.
His coach Di Sheppard, who discovered him at Ipswich Grammar School where she is the athletics coach, is just as direct.
“We talk about it because to us it’s a given (that he breaks 10 seconds),” she says. “But to us it’s over here, when it happens it happens, and if it happens early … because everything’s happening sooner than we expected.”
When the 2032 Brisbane Olympics are raised where Gout will be 24 and at the peak of his powers, there is another water-choking moment. “We’re aiming for double gold, that’s the plan in Brisbane,” Sheppard declares.
And that’s exactly what she told Gout the first time she met him.
THE DISCOVERY
Gout Gout came to attend Ipswich Grammar School in Year 7 on the recommendation of a friend who played in his football team. A Lionel Messi fan, he enjoyed running around on the soccer pitch but that was about it.
Athletics wasn’t on his radar but that changed dramatically when he tagged along with some mates and lined up in the 100m at a school carnival.
“At the grade 7 carnival I was versing the national under-13 silver medallist and I beat him,” Gout says. “And then the coach was like, ‘Ahhhhh I want this kid’.
“Until then I was just the regular kid running around playing football, and other sports, and wasn’t anything special. There were kids way quicker than me back then.”
Sheppard, who also discovered Paris Olympian Joseph Deng 10 years ago at the school and guided him to the 800m Australian record, was taken by what she saw in Gout and her sell for switching to athletics was a knockout.
“Coach told me I could win an Olympic medal, that’s how she sold it to me when I was in grade 7,” Gout says. “I looked at her and was like, what? But she said definitely and I’m like, ‘OK well let me try then’.”
He started by dominating the GPS private schools competition. “I was a nobody and I came out and won the 100m, 200m, came third in the 400m and won the relay,” Gout says.
“And that’s where I kind of put my name out there, that’s in year 7 and I came back the next year and did the same thing. Then I was like, ‘OK let me fully get into this”.
In Year 9 he started training fully for track and field and at the state junior championships ran 10.95sec as a 14-year-old. He then went to the Australian junior championships in Sydney and disappointed, coming sixth in the 100m and fourth in the 200m.
Later in the season at the national All-Schools championships, he won the sprint double and broke the 200m record.
“That was the turning point,” he says. “I definitely didn’t like getting beaten, it’s not something I enjoy.”
Sheppard had asked Gout to join her training group outside of the school set-up to fast-track his development although she had to make an exception.
“The family couldn’t afford it,” she says. “So I just said, ‘Well, I want you, I’m not taking money, that’s not what I do it for, please just come’.”
THE JOURNEY
Gout still shares a room with his older brother Mawien. There are seven kids in the family including twin girls.
Mawien was born in South Sudan before his parents, Monica and Bona, fled the war-torn country for Egypt where their first daughter, Achel, was born.
In 2006 they moved to Australia – Canada was the other option – and settled in Brisbane with Gout born the following year.
“I think because my parents’ friends were all moving to Australia and they felt Australia had better opportunities so they moved together,” he says. “I think if I had moved there (to Canada) it would definitely be a different life.”
His father, who studied law back in his homeland, has worked many jobs, sometimes up to three at a time, to support the family and is currently a food technician during the day at a local hospital and Uber driver by night while his mother is a cleaner.
“I have seen what they do and I’ve definitely got a good work ethic off my parents,” Gout says. “My parents, they want their kids to be successful and me and my other siblings, we really want to make them proud.”
He did that in October when he was signed by footwear giant Adidas – the company’s overseas boss wanted the 16-year-old after seeing a viral race video earlier this year – after a spirited bidding war between brands in a deal believed to be one of the biggest for an Australian athlete.
“It was definitely surreal, I still can’t believe it and my parents can’t believe it,” he says. “It’s definitely crazy, I mean I was a nobody and now I’m someone so I don’t want to be cocky or be something crazy.
“It’s definitely life-changing but I always just stay grounded. Don’t spend your money too much because you want to build wealth and not go out buying fancy stuff.”
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THE FAME
A video of Gout setting a personal best of 10.29sec at the Queensland Athletics Championships in March went viral around the world on social media, collecting more than 1 million views on Instagram and YouTube.
“Everyone started to know me after that,” Gout says.
They knew a lot more after the world junior championships in Peru in August, just two weeks after the Paris Olympics. Gout came in ranked No.11 in the world, his aim was to make the final but after he “jogged” through the heat and semi-finals, the goalposts shifted.
In the U/20 200m final South Africa’s Bayanda Walaza – who is almost two years older – got a brilliant start and was 10m in front at the bend.
“I was like, be calm and as soon as I came to the bend, I pumped my arms a bit faster and I started gaining on him and it was really close on the line,” Gout says.
“I really wanted it but he just pipped me on the line but it was great because the whole world definitely saw me and what I could potentially do in the future.”
Gout’s time of 20.60sec was the fastest ever run by a 16-year-old at the event, taking the record – which had stood for 22 years – off eight-time Olympic champion Bolt.
That performance sent the Bolt comparisons into overdrive which Gout says he takes “with a grain of salt”.
“I’m just trying to be Gout Gout, obviously I do run like him and I do sometimes look like him but obviously I’m making a name for myself.
“I think I’ve done that pretty well and I just want to continue doing that and continuing to be not only Usain Bolt but continuing to be Gout Gout.”
He has never met or spoken to Bolt but occasionally will look back at videos of the great Jamaican for motivation.
“I go back and look at when he was my age,” Gout says. “See what he did and see what kind of a young man he was, he grew up and up until the Olympics.
“I just love watching his timeline and how he grew as a man.”
In January Gout and Sheppard are travelling to the US for a training stint with Olympic 100m champion Noah Lyles at his Orlando base. It will be a learning opportunity on many fronts, including how to deal with the hype and when the inevitable career plateau hits during the big step from junior to senior ranks.
The pair could clash at next year’s world championships in Tokyo with Sheppard leaving the door open to qualifying in the 200m although given he will also be doing his Year 12 studies, they won’t be chasing times to make it happen.
“We’re only at the start of this journey,” Sheppard says, pointing out Gout has only recently started lifting weights in the gym – years later than most aspiring juniors – and did a 90kg PB on Monday.
Gout laughs about the notoriety which has started to come his way although it has forced a change to his school routine.
When he gets off the bus in the morning he can no longer walk through the junior school, instead he has to walk around the outside of the school to another entrance. “It gets hectic,” he says.
Gout’s favourite escape is when he’s running, he loves the emotion running fast can generate.
“It’s like you’re floating, especially how high I get off the ground when I’m running, It definitely feels like I’m floating, it feels like I’m just slicing through the air.”
He then pauses for the mic-drop moment: “It feels like basically a lightning bolt.”
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