How a teenager from Ipswich became Australia’s most exciting athlete
The teen dubbed ‘the next Usain Bolt’ on dodging a job at Macca’s, his high school formal and his most indulgent purchase since signing with Adidas.
There’s a moment when everything starts to change. If you watch the footage back, it’s about halfway through the race, just before the tight-knit group of Lycra-clad racers begins to round the turn and make its way down the straight.
It’s December 2024, the final of the under-18 boys’ 200 metres at the All-Schools Athletics Championships in Brisbane; until then, an event that was unlikely to dominate the national sporting conversation, let alone the national news. But that was before the whole country knew about a Queensland high-schooler named Gout Gout. Soon, they won’t be able to forget him.
The racers spill out of the bend and a figure in maroon starts to emerge. Gout, his arms pumping by his sides, his head tall and proud, pulls himself clear of the pack. The 200 metres is a sprint, but Gout looks unhurried. His movement is graceful, smooth, easy, like a stone skimming the surface of a lake. Every muscle in sync. It is as though the mundane laws of physics that restrain us everyday humans somehow don’t apply to him, and in a way that is true. There’s something magical about the way he runs.
His competitors fight valiantly, but they never really stand a chance. By the time Gout crosses the finish line, he is so far in front that the television camera struggles to fit them all in the frame. Victory for Gout Gout. But he has achieved something even more extraordinary than a rollicking win: with a time of 20.04 seconds, he has broken the Australian 200-metre record set by Peter Norman some 56 years earlier at the 1968 Mexico Olympic Games. That’s when everything really changed.
Just six months later, it’s a mild autumn afternoon, the day after Gout’s school formal.
“I had a great time. I really enjoyed it!” he says of last night’s event. It’s easy to forget that the same person who is breaking track records and earning worldwide headlines is still just 17 and in his final year at Ipswich Grammar in South East Queensland.
“It’s definitely been crazy,” says Gout of the media circus that followed last year’s result.
“People asking me for photos and things of that nature, it’s definitely surreal. It’s crazy to think how far I’ve come. But it’s given me perspective to see how far I can actually go, as well.”
Brands have been circling him since he was in his early teens, but after Gout claimed the national record, the feeding frenzy really began. His agent, veteran athletics manager James Templeton – JT, as he’s known – knew to hold off for the right deal. A few weeks after the All-Schools Athletics Championships, Gout signed with Adidas for a long-term partnership that is likely to be worth millions of dollars over the coming years.
“JT told me how much they were willing to pay to get me on their side,” says Gout of the offers he received following the win. “It was crazy. The number kept getting higher and I realised how much these companies think I’m worth.
“But that sponsorship really helps you get to the next level because obviously you need the money to travel and to train. Especially since I’m at school, so I don’t need to go and find a job at Maccas or whatever to put fuel in my car. It definitely helps a lot.”
It also gives Gout, who is one of seven children and whose parents fled South Sudan for Australia 20 years ago, the chance to offer his family a brighter future. “Long term, I’d like to set myself up and set my family up,” he says.
“I’ve saved a lot and I bought myself a new car when I got my Ps, so that’s probably the biggest purchase I’ve made so far. I haven’t gone crazy.”
Gout trains six days a week, with a mix of time on the track and in the gym, plus there’s schoolwork to do (he’s an A-grade student). The Adidas deal also gave him the chance to travel to Florida earlier this year to train with fellow Adidas ambassador and Olympic champion Noah Lyles, who offered him advice on dealing with the media and opened his eyes to competing at the highest level.
Perhaps it’s no surprise that Gout is rubbing shoulders with Olympians; his name has already been mentioned alongside the sport’s greatest. His 20.04-second 200-metre time makes him faster than Usain Bolt was at the same age and in February, Gout beat Lyle’s personal best over 400 metres.
When Channel 7’s Spotlight dedicated a program to Gout’s astonishing success earlier this year, they didn’t dance around the comparisons; they put it right there in the title of the program: “The next Usain Bolt?”.
Templeton tends to shy away from those suggestions. What 17-year-old needs that kind of pressure? But his trainer, Di Sheppard, is not the type to hold back. “I’m not suggesting it. He’s going to go to that level,” she said when Spotlight’s Bruce McAvaney asked if she thought Gout could get to the top. “Olympic gold. It might not be ’28, but definitely going to happen in 2032.”
Gout doesn’t have much of a race-day ritual. He likes a solid breakfast. If the race is in the afternoon, he heads to the track a little earlier and gets used to the venue. He’s Christian and likes to say a prayer. But once he leaves the blocks, his mind is clear.
He can usually tell straightaway if it’s going to be a fast run, though sometimes he can astonish even himself. At the All Schools competition, he thought he was probably on track to beat his own personal best in the 200 metres.
“Finding out it was the open national record was insane,” he says. “That really surprised me.”
Soon, Gout will head to Europe to compete at July’s U23 Diamond League event in Monaco, with his sights set on the open World Athletics Championships in Tokyo this September.
Then there’s the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics and Brisbane 2032 on the horizon. Australia hasn’t had a competitor in the men’s 100-metre or 200-metre finals since Peter Norman’s record-setting run in 1968. That record has now fallen. And Gout is in the best position in more than half a century to put Australia back on the top of the track-and-field world and inspire a whole new generation of future athletic stars. Like his trainer, he is convinced he has what it takes to make history; the wallpaper on his phone is blank but for a single sentence: “You’re going to be Olympic champion,” it reads. He sees it every time he unlocks his phone.
When the big offers started to come in for Gout, many of the sporting endorsements arrived with strings attached. He would have to move overseas, to relocate to a high-end training facility in Jamaica.
But Templeton was convinced it wasn’t the right move. Gout needed to stay here in Australia, with his family, his support system and with Sheppard, his trainer and, alongside Templeton, perhaps his greatest fan of all. “She’s helped a lot, from day dot. She’s always told me the truth, no beating around the bush. When Di told me I could take it so much further, I took her word for it and I’ve been all in, ever since,” says Gout of his coach, who’s been with him since he was just 13.
“All gas, no brakes.”
Production credits:
Photography: Daphne Nguyen
Styling: Ewan Bell
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