Australian teen sprinting sensation Gout Gout has joined some of sport’s elite by signing a new deal with one of the biggest sporting brands in the world.
The 16-year-old will join the likes of football icons Lionel Messi and David Beckham as well as NBA superstar Steph Curry and the NFL’s best quarterback Patrick Mahomes in the Adidas stable on a professional contract.
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Gout has been compared to eight-time Olympic gold medallist Usain Bolt not only for his tall stature but also because he broke the Jamaican legend’s 200 metre record for 16-year-olds at the Under 20 World Championships earlier this year.
The high school student from Ipswich in Queensland took home a silver medal in a field full of more experienced sprinters as he flew home in 20.60 seconds to just beat Bolt’s mark of 20.61 at the 2002 Junior World Championships.
Gout also has ran the 100 metre in 10.29 seconds, and he was a key part of the Australian 4×100 metre relay team that finished fifth at the Under 20 World Championships.
He is the most exciting Australia prospect on the track in many years with 2012 Olympic 100 metre hurdles gold medallist Sally Pearson recently suggesting that “maybe we are seeing the next Usain Bolt”.
“What you see of him on those videos is pretty impressive and, god, he’s going to be at the ripe age for the Brisbane Olympics coming around in a home country,” Pearson said.
“God, he’s just going to set the world on fire, I think. He’s doing the blue-riband events, as well, which everyone wants to see, so that’s going to take a lot of, I think, courage from him to be able to step up and have that belief in him, which he obviously already does, but to hold onto that all through a couple of Olympic cycles that we’re going into [leading up to] Brisbane.
“I think it’s very special for Australian sport and the Australian community to be able to see someone who could be quite dominant in Brisbane in the blue-riband events in the athletics. It’s going to just be electric.”
Many in Australian athletics believe Gout will be in the medal frame at the Los Angeles Olympic in four years time, but he also may be primed to become a national hero in front of his home fans in Brisbane in 2032.
Adidas clearly think so too.
But Gout is not daunted by the attention.
“I’m super excited to have signed with Adidas,” Gout told Citius Mag.
“I’m not stopping here. I’ll work so hard to repay the faith they have shown me.
“I’ll stay hungry and chase down what’s next.”
WHO IS GOUT GOUT?
The teenager was born in Brisbane to South Sudanese migrants Monica and Bona, and he is one of seven children.
Before the Under 20 World Championship, Gout attracted plenty of attention on social media for his lightning fast speed.
A video of him blitzing the field in a race at the Queensland Sport and Athletics Centre has been viewed more than 13 million times on Twitter, and he came across the radar of athletics fans as a result.
Keen observers were impressed even more when he backed up his fast-growing reputation with his scintillating runs in Peru.
The comparisons to Bolt naturally came thick and fast, but Gout was unphased by such lofty praise.
“It’s pretty cool because Usain Bolt is arguably the greatest athlete of all time and just being compared to him is a great feeling,” Gout said.
“Obviously, I’m Gout Gout so I’m trying to make a name for myself. If I can get to the level he was, that would be a great achievement.”
His running journey truly began as a year seven student at Ipswich Grammar.
Gout initially showed promise as a rugby player – which is no surprise given his speed – but he impressed with his natural talent during a school athletics carnival and soon enough was under the watchful eye of coach Diane Sheppard.
Sheppard also coached Joseph Deng – the middle-distance runner who made is Olympic debut in Paris earlier this year – at Ipswich Grammar, and is highly regarded around Australia for her ability to produce elite runners.
When she started with Gout, his arms swung all over the place and he was not the best starter.
But Sheppard quickly ironed out the kinks and his improvement was rapid.
“Gout came to Ipswich Grammar as a full fee-paying student and they were pushing a rugby kid at me, but I saw him run around and he got right up on his toes. He is a great kid from a great family,” Sheppard told Athletics Australia in 2022 when Gout broke the Australian Under 16 records in the 100m and 200m.
“My biggest thing with the kids is about being humble, and he has got it in bucket loads.”
Gout’s humility keeps him grounded when he does thing like break four records in four runs at the Queensland private schools athletic carnival earlier this month.
He knows there are far bigger fish to fry in his future, because as he wrote on his Instagram after the U20 World Championships, “this is only the start, we got more from where that come”.
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