Untapered, unruffled and unstoppable, sprinter Gout Gout has continued his sparkling summer by adding another title to his cabinet at the Queensland Athletics Championships in Brisbane.
Three months after breaking the Australian 200m record at the same track, the teenager warmed up for the Maurie Plant meet in Melbourne by claiming the state under-20 100m crown on Saturday.
He revealed he has been targeting the meet on March 29 for something special so he is in the middle of a heavy training block.
Still, the 17-year-old clocked 10.39 seconds into a slight headwind in his heat before running 10.38 seconds in the final.
“It’s one of the top 10 times of my career, so I couldn’t be happier,” he said.
The Queensland sprinter set a wind-assisted 10.04 seconds personal best at the Australian All Schools Championships in Brisbane last year.
His top legal time is 10.17 which puts him in the selection frame for the world championships in Japan in September.
Gout recently returned from a Florida training camp where he trained with Olympic champion Noah Lyles and the American’s coach Lance Brauman.
The gains he made in that brief stint were not so much physical.
He concentrated on adding psychological muscle to an already impressive mindset that has had to cope with extraordinary public focus.
Although still at school, he is racing against men, has signed a long-term sponsorship deal with sportswear giant Adidas and faces enormous expectation every time he competes.
after newsletter promotion
The experience with Lyles exposed him to a larger-than-life character with a proven record for converting pressure into stellar performance.
“I just learned to be myself and follow my processes,” Gout said.
“You can do all the work in the world but if you’re in good mental shape you’ll be right.”
Photograph: Dave Hunt/AAP
Gout’s immediate target will be his first 200m race of the season at the Queensland Championships in Brisbane on Sunday.
In December last year the teenage sprinting sensation put the world on notice when he broke the Australian 200m sprint record set by Peter Norman 56 years ago – at just a month shy of 17.
That time would’ve seen him finish sixth in the final of the event at the Paris Olympics last year.
Only one other Australian, Patrick Johnson, has a time under 10 seconds over 100 metres. Johnson’s 9.93 seconds, set in 2003, remains the benchmark.
Gout Gout isn’t the only young gun firing Australian athletics to new sprint heights. Fellow Queenslander Lachlan Kennedy clocked an eye-catching 10.03 seconds at the Perth Track Classic earlier this month.
The 21-year-old Kennedy, Rohan Browning, Sebastian Sultana, Joshua Azzopardi and Jacob Despard all have faster times over the distance than Gout.
Gout could yet face that quintet at the Stawell Gift on Easter Monday.