PERTH: The atmosphere generated by Gout Gout at the Australian athletics championships was encapsulated brilliantly by a lady in her seventies watching on from high in the grandstand.

“Nobody was breathing!” beamed Perth local Rebecca in a thick Irish accent, describing the scenes in which the 17-year-old stormed to victory in 19.84 seconds in the open-age 200-metre final on Sunday afternoon.

“Everybody was engaaaaaged in it,” she added, her hands flailing around.

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Rebecca held up her phone as Gout hurtled around the bend and down the straight, recording every stride of what turned out to be the fastest run yet of the teen phenom’s spellbinding sprint career, albeit in illegal wind conditions.

She sent the video to her kids — one lives in Canberra and the other Sydney — so they’d “get a sense of the excitement”.

The only field event playing out when the runners set themselves in the blocks was the women’s hammer throw final, but that was put on pause when the schoolboy sensation was ready to run. Every one of the 5278 people at WA Athletics Stadium on the day, the hammer throwers included, had to watch.

Then, amid complete silence, someone false started.

Murmurs pierced the silence.

The false start was made by Lachie Kennedy, the only one in the field with a realistic chance of beating Gout. He was shown a red card. The highly anticipated rematch, set up by Kennedy’s pulsating triumph over Gout in Melbourne a fortnight earlier, had gone up in smoke. Everyone in the venue, all 5278, sighed as one. Clapping followed. Kennedy was gutted, and the show of support was swift and emphatic.

After a couple of minutes, Gout and co. set themselves in the blocks again.

A second false start followed, but no red card.

Finally, after another couple of minutes brimming with suspense, the race was under way.

Gout didn’t emerge off the bend with the lead. Sydney University’s Christopher Ius did, helped by Gout’s typically cumbersome start and having a lane wider out.

Then came the prodigy’s trademark off-the-bend slingshot. Springing into the straight, his arms pumping furiously, he opened up a gaping margin in a flash. A crowd cheering wildly was spurring him on.

As Gout steamed toward the finish line, claps and screams of “go, go, go” reverberated throughout the venue.

He dipped at the line and the crowd glanced at the clock. If WA Athletics Stadium has a decibel scale, it’s now in a million pieces. Picture rollercoaster riders careening down the most exhilarating of dips — not the terrifying kind, rather intoxicating — and the sound that comes bellowing out of their wide-open mouths. The moment the initial time of 19.88 flashed on the clock, the crowd sounded exactly like that.

“Let’s f—ing go!” Gout roared, bouncing around and beating his chest.

He circled back through the finish line, arms raised and chest puffed out, and strutted toward the packed grandstand.

He crouched down just beyond the long jump pit and performed the sign of the cross.

A horde of photographers formed a line in front of him, kneeling down and clicking furiously.

Until that point, Gout either thought the wind reading was legal or, more likely, amid the euphoria it hadn’t crossed his mind.

Over the loud speaker, commentator David Culbert made a remark that prompted the schoolboy to glance at the wind gauge.

“The wind is the devil here in Perth,” Culbert declared.

Gout swung around hastily. He saw the wind reading. It read +2.2. He threw his head back and buried his head in his hands.

“It has delivered disappointment for Gout once again,” Culbert said.

Three days earlier, on the opening night of the national championships, Gout had twice clocked 9.99 in the under-20 100m. He had never cracked the magical 10-second mark prior to the championships. All of a sudden, he had done so twice in two hours. But on both occasions, the wind was too gusty to be legal.

“He’s just seen it, he can’t believe it,” Culbert said, calling Gout’s every move after the 200m final.

The superstar’s disappointment, at least on the surface, only lasted a second or two. He faced the heaving grandstand, raised his hands above his head, and clapped, waved and blew kisses.

Earlier in the day, two friends had laid out a picnic rug on the grassy slope that hugs the track.

“We would like to think that in seven years’ time when Gout Gout wins gold at the Olympics we can think, ‘Well we were back there when he won his first senior national championship’,” Henry said.

A couple of hours later, Henry and his friend Jane saw what they had come to see.

And although the Adidas-sponsored prodigy had a marginally illegal wind pushing him along, he leapfrogged three Olympic champions — Letsile Tebogo (19.96), Usain Bolt (19.93) and Justin Gatlin (19.86) — on the under-20 “all conditions” list.

The only under-20 athlete who’s run quicker than Gout in any conditions is Erriyon Knighton, who clocked 19.49 aided by a legal wind of +1.4 metres per second in 2022.

Gout’s fame exploded when he clocked 20.04 in Brisbane in December, a time run in legal conditions and when he was still only 16, to break the open Australian record held by Peter Norman since 1968.

His celebrity status has only grown since then, on the back of his appearance at Melbourne’s Maurie Plant Meet in late March, which drew a TV audience of 1.2 million, and his Perth heroics.

“We don’t get too excited, but this one’s pretty special,” said his coach Di Sheppard, who watched the 200m final from just beyond the finish line.

“I actually got a little bit choked up. I don’t usually, but I was a bit like, ‘Oh, that one’s a bit special’.”

A bloke called Mark was working at WA Athletics Stadium across the four days, ensuring everything tech-related, including the wind gauge, was in working order.

“When he comes around that 200m bend it is just amazing,” Mark said.

“He is really good to watch. Here’s so smooth with his rhythm.”

Many of the thousands who flocked to the Perth track were young kids, and many of them left with Gout’s prized signature scribbled down.

His coach always hugs him before he enters the call room, and once the race is over.

“He is a gem,” Sheppard said.

“He is a gold mine.”