Four years ago, Di Sheppard walked across the oval at Ipswich Grammar to a spindly year 7 kid who had just run a race against bigger children. There was something about how he ran; it was different. He had something.
“I think you should do athletics,” the coach said.
Gout Gout could be Australia’s greatest male sprinter.Credit: Eddie Jim
Gout Gout smiled a big, toothy, uncertain smile. The next bit he was not expecting.
“Brisbane 2032 Olympics. It’s ours,” Sheppard said earnestly. “The double [100- and 200-metre gold medals].”
Gout didn’t know if she was serious, but the stern, grey-haired woman looked as though serious was all she did.
Nothing that has happened since that day has disabused Sheppard or Gout of the idea that he can be a dual Olympic gold medallist. Indeed, they are even more emboldened now than then about what will happen next: Gout will break 10 seconds for the 100m and 20 seconds for the 200m. He will win not one Olympic gold medal, but two. Like Usain Bolt.
Gout Gout broke Usain Bolt’s record by 0.01s for the 200m at the same age.
They figure the Queensland schoolboy’s natural talent is so extraordinary that if he stays the course and does the work, extraordinary results will follow. Those results would be unlike anything an Australian male sprinter has done.
“We talk about it [breaking 10 seconds] because to us, it’s a given. But to us, it’s still over here [in the distance]. When it happens, it happens, and if it happens early – because everything’s happening sooner than we expected – it happens early,” Sheppard said. Patrick Johnson is the only Australian to break 10s; he holds an Australian record of 9.93s.
Gout is only 16. He turns 17 before Christmas, and is doing year 12 next year. He is still a boy, but by the time the 2032 Games are held in Brisbane, he will be 24 and in his prime.
“We’re aiming for double gold. That’s the plan in Brisbane,” he said.
A Bolt record already broken
Unlike other precocious teen athlete stories you have read, Gout’s starts with this: he has run faster than the fastest man ever ran when that man was a boy.
Earlier this year, Gout broke Usain Bolt’s under-17s world junior championships record for the 200m when he ran second in the final of the same competition, in Peru (the boy who beat him was 18 months older than Gout).
“I just knew he [Bolt] won back in the day, but I didn’t know what time or like how he did it, but one of the news articles said I did it. And I was like, ‘Wow, that’s pretty cool’,” Gout said.
Until now, Gout hasn’t done a lengthy interview. The world has spoken for him and about him since a video of him running 10.29s in March went viral, then he did what he did in Peru and created the inevitable headlines around the world about being the next Bolt. Given he broke Bolt’s record, it’s pretty hard to avoid the comparisons. But they are there not just because he broke the record, but because he actually looks like Bolt when he runs.
“I do see it [the Bolt similarity],” Gout says. “My stride length is pretty long, my knee height is pretty high and just the amount of tallness I get when I’m running.”
But he takes “the Bolt stuff” with a grain of salt.
“I’m just me trying to be me, trying to be Gout Gout. Obviously, I do run like him. I do sometimes look like him, but obviously, I’m making a name for myself, and I think I’ve done that pretty well. I just want to continue doing that and continue to be not only Usain Bolt but continue to be Gout Gout.”
Usain Bolt after winning the 100m gold medal at the 2012 London Olympics.Credit: AP
Gout is only 180.3 centimetres as opposed to Bolt, who is 195.6 centimetres, but he looks tall when he runs. He has that upright Bolt style and long stride.
His similarity to Bolt’s style is a coincidence, he says, and not a product of Gout modelling himself on Bolt.
“That was just the way I ran,” he said.
“Obviously, my technique wasn’t always as good as it was now, I’ve developed better technique over time and just started to look like him more. I just love watching his timeline and how he grew as a man.”
Gout too is growing as a man. It’s easy to forget how young he is when he speaks maturely of his career and family. He has mapped his own plan out.
Gout and his coach Di Sheppard.Credit: Eddie Jim
“There are stepping stones we wish to complete, so the first will obviously be the Peter Norman [national 200m] record, 20.16s. And after that just getting faster and obviously the big milestone is sub-20s. And after that, just keep getting faster,” he said.
“Sub-10 [seconds for the 100m] will definitely happen.”
He is so matter of fact about that, and about making history. Partly, that is the guilelessness of youth, and maybe it’s also naivete about the magnitude of those milestones. But more importantly it is an attitude he has that of course he will break these times and set these records because he expects to win Olympic gold medals – and you can’t do that if you are not regularly and comfortably breaking 10s and 20s.
A life-changing deal
The drive to succeed is largely a product of his family. Gout is one of seven kids. His dad, Bona Gout, was studying law in South Sudan before the family fled the country. Now he works in food technology at Ipswich Hospital and drives an Uber until late at night. Gout’s mum, Monia Abag, worked as a cleaner in South Sudan before the young family fled and does the same work in Australia. They have instilled a strong work ethic and demand for humility in their children.
Gout shares a room with his eldest brother, Mawjen, who was born in South Sudan in 2001 shortly before the family left the country. Gout’s older sister, Achel, was born in Cairo in 2005 while the family was waiting to relocate permanently. They eventually had a choice of where to migrate: Australia or Canada? Other South Sudanese friends in Cairo were going to Australia, so they joined them. Gout could as easily be running for Canada now.
Instead, he was born in Australia – and given his double name.
“In our culture it is common for one child to have a double name. My friend’s name is Deng Deng and there is Bol Bol as well,” he said.
Gout wants to be himself.Credit: Eddie Jim
“People who don’t know me personally call me Gout Gout, but my friends just call me Gout. Or GG.
“There are seven of us kids in the house. It’s crazy at times, but everyone just does their own thing.
“It feels pretty good because my parents, they want their kids to be successful, and me and my other siblings, we really want to make them proud. So it’s really, it feels really good [to be achieving things on the track]. I’ve seen what they do and I definitely do [want to succeed].”
Recently Gout signed a significant long-term deal with adidas – rare in Australia for a teenager. The sportswear company recognised the raw talent and rapid trajectory of the 16-year-old.
“That is definitely life-changing, but myself, I just always stay grounded. Don’t spend your money too much because you want to build wealth, not just go out and buy fancy stuff,” Gout said, adding he had been able to buy his parents a few things.
Things have come faster than expected for Gout and Sheppard. While Gout had natural talent, he also had natural limitations. He is a toe-walker, meaning he tends to bounce up on the balls of his feet. It left his Achilles tendons so tight and short he couldn’t put his heels on the ground. When he started training a couple of days a week with Sheppard, it took them six months of stretching to get him to the point he could get down onto the blocks relatively normally.
Now he can get his feet down, but his start is still routinely slow. Hence, the 200m has initially been a better distance for him, for he needed the time and space to catch up.
He is still working to improve his starts, and now prefers to adopt a relatively rare American style of putting both knees on the ground when he is at the blocks at the start of a race. He says it makes him feel more stable.
The improvements from training a couple of times a week were immediate, and soon Sheppard asked Gout’s family if he could go full-time with her squad. The large family couldn’t afford the coaching fees; Sheppard waived them. She couldn’t let Gout’s opportunity slip.
“In grade 7 at the GPS [schools carnival] I was a nobody and came out and won the 100, 200 came third in the 400 and we won the relay, so I kind of put my name out there. Then I came back the next year and did the same thing again,” Gout said.
“In grade 9 I was fully training for track and field, and I came out at state championships and ran 10.95s as a 14-year-old and I won. So that felt really good, and then went onto the national stage at Sydney nationals, but unfortunately I didn’t get the result I wanted.
“I came sixth in the 100 and fourth in the 200 so that really made me determined and I came back that same year at All Schools nationals and broke the 200 record and won both.
“So that was the sort of turning point for me in running.”
A year of improvement
This year he has quickly gone from promising national-level talent to world-class.
“This year kind of felt like a surprise,” Gout said of his remarkable improvement.
“I started the year off with the 20.69s in late January and that was really a mind-blower because that was at the time the fastest in under-20s … I came out and ran the 10.29s and that went pretty viral, I think. On the Instagram post I got a million views, and then there were YouTube videos all over the world and everyone started to know me.
“And I came out at nationals and I won the under-20s, won the under-18s [in the 100m and the 200m at both age groups]. I won every race I ran.
“Then obviously world junior championships came and I went in ranked 11 and our whole goal was just making it into the final, nothing else.
“I came out in the [200m] heats [and] ran a blazing time, I jogged, and it felt really easy. I felt on top of the world. I came out in the semis and it was the exact same thing and I won again, it felt pretty easy.
“And the final I knew I was gonna have a crazy start so I was just focusing on my lane on my bend and the gun went and I took off, he [18-year-old South African Bayanda Walaza] took off and he was blazing. He was like, 10 metres in front of me. I was like, ‘Let me keep calm, let me use the bend’, and as soon as I came to the bend, I pumped the arms a bit faster, and I started gaining and it was really close to the line. I really wanted it, and he just pipped me on the line.
“That was definitely great. And the whole world definitely saw me and what I could potentially do in the future.”
The viral videos – after he ran 10.29 in March – and breaking Bolt’s record made him a minor celebrity. He has about 38,000 followers on Instagram.
His friend, Olympian and national 800m record holder Joe Deng, also went to Ipswich Grammar. He has been a booster for Gout since he was young and pushed the videos around to his Instagram followers.
‘The higher I get off the ground when I’m running, it definitely feels like I’m floating. And it feels I’m just slicing into the air. It feels like basically I’m a lightning bolt.’
Gout Gout
“I find those videos really funny. I love those videos,” he said.
Now when he takes the bus to school, he has to walk the long way around from the bus stop to his classes instead of cutting through the campus because all the younger kids mob him and it takes him forever to get through. He likes it. But he also gets “people fatigue”.
Gout knows the bend is his friend in the 200m. Like Bolt, he has a long stride length, so coming off the bend he slingshots into the straight. When others are tiring and slowing to the line he is still accelerating.
Losing, albeit in the time that beat Bolt’s record, burned him. Gout hates to lose.
He could qualify for the world championships in Tokyo next year running against men and he plans to go if he gets in. Later this month, he will travel to Claremont, near Orlando in Florida, to train for two weeks with Olympic champion Noah Lyles and his coach Lance Brauman.
He is studying year 12 next year, but he is an A student so figures he can juggle the training and racing with his studies. His parents are determined his studies do not fall victim to athletics.
“I genuinely love the sport. I love being out there running, not only winning, but I love being in the atmosphere racing past people and being out there running fast.”
How does running that fast feel?
“It’s hard to describe because it feels like nothing, like you’re basically floating at this point, and especially the higher I get off the ground when I’m running, it definitely feels like I’m floating. And it feels I’m just slicing into the air. It feels like basically I’m a lightning bolt,” he said.
“As a kid I never thought I could be anyone, and now I’m on the path to being someone great so it definitely touches my heart closely, and I just want to show the world what I can do.”
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