Teen sprint superstar Gout Gout pulled away late to win his first international race as a senior athlete and break his own Australian record in the 200 metres in the Czech Republic on Wednesday morning (AEST).
The 17-year-old from Ipswich clocked 20.02 seconds at the Ostrava Golden Spike meet to lower his own national record by two hundredths of a second.
And although the schoolboy sensation has been let down in recent months by wind readings that have rendered a host of his results unofficial, his time in Ostrava was run with a legal reading of 0.0 metres per second.
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Two Australians came up trumps at the Czech Republic meet in Gout and Tokyo 2020 hero Peter Bol, who streaked to victory in the 800 metres and stopped the clock just one hundredth of a second outside his national record.
The 31-year-old posted a time of 1:43.80 in a win over Croatian Marino Bloudek (1:44.02), who finished second, and Moroccan Abdelati El Guesse (1:44.19), who took third.
Nineteen-year-old prodigy Cameron Myers also impressed, clocking 3:29.80 in the 1500 metres to break his own national under-20 record and set the third-fastest open-age time in Australian history.
Gout Gout in action at the Ostrava Golden Spike meet. AP
Myers, who finished fourth, obliterated his personal best by 2.92 seconds, and rose from 19th to fourth on the all-time, worldwide under-20 list.
And Australia’s Kurtis Marschall finished third in the pole vault with a top vault of 5.82 metres, behind Swedish world record holder Armand “Mondo” Duplantis (6.13m) and Emmanouil Karalis (5.92m) of Greece.
In the 200m, Gout emerged off the bend in second place, behind Cuban Reynier Mena, before catching and passing him in the final 50m.
Gout (20.02) beat the second-placed Mena (20.19) and third-placed Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake (20.60), who hails from Great Britain, by considerable margins.
Dozens of kids held out their hands from the front row of a healthy crowd, and the young superstar was all too happy to dish out a string of high-fives.
The sold-out crowd of 15,000 clapped and cheered, and he beat his chest and yelled, “Let’s go!”.
Gout Gout roars in Ostrava. AP
“I’ve felt stronger in training these last couple of months and I’ve felt good since I got to Europe last Thursday,” Gout said.
“I knew Mena would come hard at me the first 100 but I was confident I’d be close enough to come home strongly in the second part of the race, which is of course my stronger part.
“I felt calm but strong as I came off the turn and was confident I’d be strong enough to get the win.
“Another national record! Pretty happy with that. It’s not a bad first-up in Europe!”
Australia’s Lachlan Kennedy, who a few weeks ago became the first Australian in 22 years to legally break the 10-second barrier in the 100m, withdrew from the Ostrava Golden Spike 200m field a couple of weeks ago.
His agent, Nic Bideau, told Wide World of Sports he opted out of the race because running bends in training had been causing back soreness.
Gout Gout celebrating his win. AP
Gout has now broken the national record previously held by Peter Norman for 56 years on three occasions. He bettered the Australian icon’s 20.06 seconds, set at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, at the national school titles in Brisbane last December when he stormed through a race in 20.04. Then in March at the Queensland championships in Brisbane, he registered a 20.05.
He twice dipped under the 20-second barrier at the national championships in Perth in April, clocking 19.98 and 19.84, but both runs were aided by tailwinds too strong to be legal.
In Ostrava on Wednesday morning (AEST), Gout moved from equal seventh on the all-time under-20 list to equal sixth. The 19.49 set by American Erriyon Knight in 2022 remains the record.
The fastest legal time recorded by Jamaican legend Usain Bolt as a 17-year-old was 19.93. Gout (20.02) doesn’t turn 18 until December 29.
The Adidas-sponsored superstar will next line up over 200m at the Monaco Diamond League meet on July 12 (AEST), but will race in the under-23 field instead of the open division.
Two months later — and after another few weeks of year 12 at Ipswich Grammar School — he will contest the 200m at the world championships in Tokyo on his senior Australian debut.
