Bruce McAvaney reveals why Gout Gout could stun world athletics in Tokyo
‘Is Gout running?’ has become athletics' equivalent of ‘Is Bradman batting?’ says the legendary commentator as he prepares to call the teen's Tokyo mission.
Bruce McAvaney will give us a buzz at 9.30am. The phone dings at 9.31am. The tardiness is breathtaking. Just when you think you know someone and the meticulousness they probably take into every minute of every day of their kaleidoscope lives.
“I need to be better than this,” McAvaney grins down the line.
And now we’re yapping away about the joy of sport. About the fascination of watching folks chasing their dreams in their chosen vocations, with their bats and/or their balls, and their clubs and/or their swords, and their boxing gloves and/or their baseball bats, and their swimming togs and/or their saddlecloths, and their footy boots and/or their running spikes, and the various bits of gear Gout Gout and Australia’s bumper track-and-field team will take into the World Athletics Championships from Saturday, when McAvaney will be huddled in his SBS commentary booth, whacking on his headphones and calling the card as if there’s nothing more important, thrilling or meaningful in this world.
Why do we care? What draws us in? Why do we tune in, in our millions, from Perth to Port Macquarie, and from Broome to Brisbane, and from Darwin to Dunedoo, to Friday night footy, and the Bledisloe Cup, and to Oscar Piastri driving rings around Lando Norris in Formula One?
Why do these people, mere humans, invariably as dorky and clumsy and uncertain and fallible as the rest of us either side of kick-off and full-time, grab our attention so fully and feverishly?
“I think they give us a sense of something greater than ourselves. Which is a beautiful thing,” McAvaney says. “We all need that, don’t you think? There’s a lot of stuff that goes on in the world that can be hard yards. You feel like you’re pushing a wheelbarrow up a hill for whatever reason but then somebody does something in sport that takes you breath away and it’s like listening to great music or reading great literature. It takes us all to a place that feels a little bit greater than ourselves. You regain that sense of optimism for life, I think.”
I think it’s doesn’t sound right to call him McAvaney. He’s the voice of Australian sport. Likeable. Passionate. Sincere. Joyful, playful, deep, meaningful. He gives me a bit of life advice that shan’t be repeated, but I’m shocked by how perceptive he is. How can he have possibly known such-and-such about me? Bruce is observant and insightful. Bruce cares. Let’s call him Bruce.
“Sport is pretty good therapy,” Bruce reckons. “We all feel, in a little tiny way, that even if we’re not personally involved in an athlete’s journey, we’ve travelled a part of the way with them. We’re in that moment with them. I think sport and the athletes we watch are giving us a wonderful sense of hopefulness about the world we’re in.”
Is Gout running the 200m in Tokyo? Is Pope Leo XIV a Catholic? Australia has a whopping 86-strong team and regardless of the massive absences of Paris Olympics pole vault gold medallist Nina Kennedy and Jemima Montag, who won two walking bronze medals in the city of love and highlights, and Lachie Kennedy, a sneaky chance of making the 100m final, Australian track and field is getting its second wind, led by the 17-year-old breath of fresh air who runs like a brisk and invigorating wind.
“I haven’t seen anyone with such raw potential and talent,” Bruce says of Gout. “I don’t say that lightly because we’ve had a lot of great champions over the years, but nobody at this age has shown so much raw promise. If he put his cue in the rack in an hour’s time and never raced again you’d say OK, at 16 years of age he was the fastest 200m runner Australia has ever seen. Incredible. But the story, his story, the story of Gout Gout, it’s only really beginning in Tokyo in so many ways.”
What ways?
“He’s been to the world juniors and finished second,” Bruce says. “He was fantastic there but the real story only begins next week. The world championships, the 200m, the global stage. We don’t know how a 17-year-old is going to feel when he puts those feet in the blocks, knowing the whole of Australia, and much of the world, will be watching. He’s the one Australian track and field athlete to have cut through. Anyone in the world who follows athletics will be looking for him.
“He’s not a household name in America, and he’s not a household name in England, but if you’re Steve Cram commentating for the UK, or if you’re an American commentator, this kid is one of the three or four most interesting people to them at the world championships. We haven’t had anyone like that. You just strap yourself in and hold your breath.”
Gout will go like the clappers against the 200m podium from the Paris Games: Botswana’s gold medallist Letsile Tebogo and Americans Kenny Bednarek and the larger than life 100m king Noah Lyles. Gout’s ranked 16th in the world but his personal best of 19.84sec would have slipped him into fourth at Paris.
“We’re all in the same boat. We have no idea how he’s going to go,” Bruce says. “It’s a complete mystery, and that’s the fascination.
“If you sat down with me over a beer, and we went through the 87 Australian athletes (now 86), I could probably give you a pretty accurate guide to where they’re going to finish. I can’t with Gout.
“He could get run out in his heat, which would be a huge disappointment to him, or he could make the final and do something crazy.
“I think he’ll probably make the semi-finals and he’s got a chance of making the final. But I honestly don’t know.”
But you’re Bruce. You always know.
“I have no idea how he’s going to go but to get back to what we were saying, it’s the beginning of something we haven’t seen before,” he says.
“Cathy Freeman in Sydney was bigger than big because it was her local Olympics and she was the centrepiece. For a world championships, away from home, this is unique. The beginning of something. The thing is, he’s got the talent. I saw him a couple of weeks ago in training. I went and had a look at him and physically, he’s developed from the start of this year.
“His legs are stronger, you can see it. His legs have built and he’s grown two or three centimetres. He’s still only 17 but he’s filling out into a senior athlete.”
You suspect Gout will get better the farther he goes. His heat will be nerve-racking, his first dash in the big time. Reaching the semi-finals will feel like a win. Which may fuel an appearance in the final.
“If he gets there, you feel as though his palpable, natural showmanship, and sense of occasion, and frothing and bubbling confidence, could make him run out of his skin and give the big dogs a proper sprint for their money.
“I’m a bit with you,” Bruce says. “When you talk to athletes, you get a sense of where things may be heading. My feeling with Gout is that he’s well-equipped to handle the big stage because he has this inner confidence I feel is unshakeable. We’ll find out.
“If Noah Lyles runs past him and gives him windburn, let’s see how he responds and whether he can hold his form. I feel he can.”
Bruce says: “One of the cleverest things I’ve ever heard any athlete say was from Carl Lewis. I did yap this to Gout the last time I saw him. It was the 100m final at the 1991 world championships in Tokyo, where we’re going. Lewis was third last at halfway. I was there and it looked like Carl cannot win. Like Kingston Town in the Cox Plate. Can’t win.
“He did win and he broke the world record. In that race were six people under 10 seconds for the first time. In his press conference afterwards, Carl was asked, ‘What were you thinking at halfway?’ He replied, ‘I said to myself, ‘Don’t try to run faster.’
“He said, ‘I knew they’d come back to me.’ He said his coach, Tom Tellez, always told him not to try to run faster. Run like you normally do and that is enough. Relax and trust yourself. How clever is that under the pump?”
Rather clever.
“That’s the sort of trust Gout has to have in himself because he is going to find himself in unfamiliar territory. I think he has the inner confidence to say, ‘Relax,’ right at the moment it’s going to be crucial. That will be severely examined next week and it will be just fascinating to see how it plays out. I’m as excited by this as anything I’ve ever seen.”
Plenty of Australian eyeballs will turn towards Tokyo’s Olympic Stadium for Nicola Olyslagers and Eleanor Patterson in the high jump, and the big, beautiful bopper Matt Denny in the discus, and Jess Hull in the 800m and 1500m, and Liam Adcock in the long jump, but while Australia’s 86-strong team marks a flying leap in terms of representation – the biggest team in yonks, or forever – the bulk of eyeballs, albeit red and a little sleepy, will be looking for Gout’s heat at 9.15pm on Wednesday, and hopefully his semi-final at 10.02pm on Thursday, and the final at 11.06pm on Friday.
Bruce is fortunate to have Gout as a subject. I reckon the rest of us are lucky to have Bruce talking us through it. Of all the worthwhile attributes in a man, few things beat enthusiasm and knowledge, and Bruce has a couple of hundred metres of both in his system. My favourite little snippet from this wonderful chat? Bruce started preparing nine months ago for the world championships.
You cannot fake Bruce’s brand of genuine enthusiasm and you cannot fluke his knowledge of every athlete in every event. It takes nine months to gather.
“You put your headphones on and you’re completely enveloped in that moment,” he says of commentating. “Nothing else seems to exist. You’re enjoying it, or being challenged by it, or you’re inspired by it, or all of the above. I’m no different to anyone else. We’re all totally lost in the moment when Gout runs. Australian Athletics understands he’s a gift from God. Let’s say I’ve been asked 30 times in the past few weeks about the world championships.
“Twenty-nine of the first questions have been, ‘Is Gout running?’ You can’t manufacture that. It just happens. It takes the event from athletics to sport, and then from sport to everyone. There are very few who can do that. Is Bradman batting? Is Winx running? That’s what this is.”
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