Meet Gout Gout, the Australian sprinter drawing comparisons to Usain Bolt

There may be no sport older than sprinting. And still, there’s something singularly intoxicating about speed, about watching the fastest humans on the planet make like Usain Bolt and thunder down the straightaway, all the more so when they’ve navigated a circuitous path to get there. So, remember the name (and how could you not) “Gout Gout.” He’s an 18-year-old Australian. When he’s not watching his beloved anime or taking photos on his Kodak camera, he’s running – and inevitably winning – races in roughly the time it takes to spit out this sentence. When the 2028 Olympics arrive in Los Angeles in barely two years time, Gout Gout could bolt bolt to a medal.

Fix your eyes on lane six, the runner in the maroon shirt… 

Sixteen months ago in the equivalent of the Australian high school championships, Gout Gout, then an 11th grader, did this…

COMMENTATOR: And now we really start to open him up so let the legs loose and let the kid run… 

One imagines a car, versus a fleet of bikes, legs pumping like supercharged pistons. 

COMMENTATOR: He is Gout of this world. That is not human

Gout turned in a time of 20.04 seconds in the 200-meter dash, clocking the fastest time in Australianhistory, breaking a mark set by another runner at — get this — the 1968 Olympics.

Gout’s time in the 200 also broke the world age-group record set in 2003 by Usain Bolt, the Jamaican eight-time gold medallist, considered the sport’s greatest-ever. 

Jon Wertheim: This race you basically became the fastest 16-year-old in history.

Gout Gout: My first couple steps I had a good start. And if I have a good start, you know, it’s kinda over. ‘Cause my top-end speed is great. And once I get into top-end speed, I’m flying.

Jon Wertheim: What is running nourishing in you?

Gout Gout: Running just feeds that, I guess, inner child in me that wants to, you know, kind of feel free. Like, running, makes me feel like myself, for sure.

Jon Wertheim: This is what you were meant to do.

Gout Gout: Yeah, this is what I was pretty much put onto this Earth to do, and that’s what I’m doing.

It’s made him an overnight sensation. He keeps getting faster, and on his current trajectory of speed he could be a force at the L.A. Olympics in 2028. Four years after that: the ultimate home game.

Gout Gout: We’re in Brisbane, you know? Like, this is home. The place I grew up… 

Brisbane, the only home Gout’s known, hosts the 2032 Summer Games.

Gout will be 24 then, the age when sprinters tend, really, to hit their stride. 

COMMENTATOR: So let’s watch the young superstar rise… he’s flying… he will be Gout of this universe! 

The reaction was warranted. He didn’t just win this race, the time qualified him for the world championships. 

And if you worry all the hype is enough to inflate the ego of a teenager — don’t.

Note the woman in the visor: this “grouchy” grandma about to break up all the fun?

That’s Di Sheppard, Gout’s coach, the only one he’s ever had. 

Di Sheppard: Do we need to chase the attention? I don’t like the attention. It’s not my cup of tea. Gout handles it totally different to me. But good cop, bad cop. 

Jon Wertheim: You’re okay being the bad cop?

Di Sheppard: Hell yeah. It doesn’t bother me one bit.

Ask Gout. When he acts his age and, as we saw, goofs off at practice, his coach isn’t having it… 

DI SHEPPARD: Any excuse… 

GOUT GOUT: For real, like, if I did a curveball and [imitates with arms]. 

DI SHEPPARD: Mate, you’re lucky you can run. 

This is a story of next-big-thing energy, of his limber legs and her bad knees. 

It’s also a throwback story, a tale of old-fashioned values and virtues, not least loyalty and patience. 

We begin in 2005, when Gout’s parents emigrated from South Sudan to Brisbane,Australia’s third-largest city. Their second son of seven kids, Gout was born in 2007, his double name in keeping with Sudanese tradition. 

When Gout was the equivalent of a seventh grader at Ipswich Grammar, Sheppard (then, as now, the school’s track coach) spotted him racing classmates.

Jon Wertheim: You’re running around with your friends and this woman says, “Hey, come here.” 

Gout Gout: Yeah, yeah, ’cause previous to that like people would be like “scared of her” because she’s “cranky,” people say. So, like me being a 12-year-old, 13-year-old kid, I’m like, like, “Am I getting in trouble?” Like, “What’s going on?” And then she calls me over and she’s like, “You should come to track and field training.”

Jon Wertheim: I’m guessing you won that sprint across the field that day. 

Gout Gout: Of course, of course.

Di Sheppard: They were showing me a particular boy and Gout was running against this particular boy. And I’ve just gone, “No, no. Who’s the other kid? Who’s that? I want him.” 

Jon Wertheim: What did you see? 

Di Sheppard: I looked at him and just went, “Oh my God.” Something just gut punchy. It was just like, this kid’s the real deal.

Jon Wertheim: You saw greatness from…

Di Sheppard: Yep.

Di Sheppard: From that day, I saw him. So I was just talkin’ to the junior school headmaster. And I’d said to him that, “Watch me, I’m gonna make that one a champion.” He thought I was muckin’ around.

She never mucks around.

She has no formal track background. But her son was a fast kid with big ambitions. And in the early 2000s, when he was a student at Ipswich Grammar, she inquired as to how to become a track coach at the school. She was told that only school employees could coach. Fine. She quit her job at a supermarket and took a job handing out school uniforms, so she’d be eligible. 

Soon after starting to train with coach Di, Gout was winning, and winning. 

There were medals, trophies, and, in time, an agent. Then something funny happened, or didn’t happen: for all the attention and opportunities, Gout stayed in school, where, in December, he graduated with straight A’s. 

And he stayed with coach Di. 

Gout Gout: It’s a pretty crazy dynamic when you think about it. The old white lady and a young Black kid, you know? It’s a crazy dynamic. But turns out it works perfectly, and wouldn’t have it any other way. Yeah. 

Jon Wertheim: You – you appreciate it’s something almost like a movie. Like, cinematic about it.

Gout Gout: Yeah, yeah. It’s literally straight out of a movie. 

Jon Wertheim: But it works. 

Gout Gout: Yeah, indeed. It d– does work. And I guess our personalities kinda– filter off each other. Like we’re – all on the same level, and we’re all learning. So it’s a great relationship. 

If the coaching relationship is singular, well, so is everything about Gout. Yes, there are the inevitable comparisons to Bolt, who recently said of Gout “he looks like young me.” But, in truth, Gout recalls few other sprinters. For one, there’s his unique physique, more befitting a runner of longer distances. Gout is 6 feet tall, less than 150 lbs., all tendons, bones and ropey muscles. 

By comparison, Bolt ran at 6-foot-5, 207 lbs. Where Bolt exploded from the start, Gout can struggle off the blocks.

It’s the midrace speed endurance, his ability to sustain top speed of roughly 25 miles an hour, that makes him extraordinary. But he’s still an unfinished product, and Sheppard says failing to account for that can bring about injury and burnout.

Di Sheppard: If I tried to make him super quick now I’d break him.

Jon Wertheim: You can’t have a sprinter’s approach to sprinting.

Di Sheppard: It’s just the fact he’s a kid. And he’s got so much more physical development. Like, he only really hit puberty in the last 12 to 18 months, basically. 

Jon Wertheim: Really? 

Di Sheppard: Yep. I had to deal with a lot of growth issues with Gout. When I met Gout he walked right up on his toes. It took me six months to get the heel down, and it wasn’t all the way down. He still walked – That’s why he looks like he kind of [imitates with arms]. 

Dylan Hicks: He’s got these springs in his legs. Now…

Dylan Hicks is an expert in sports biomechanics and a movement scientist at Flinders University in Adelaide. He recently published an academic paper on sprinting, based on his country’s new star.

Dylan Hicks:… Everybody has springs in their legs because we’ve got these things called Achilles tendons. But when we have them at a longer length, Achilles tendons are really powerful at storing elastic energy. 

Dylan Hicks: So we see him sort of bouncing his way down the track and using less steps than everybody else. 

Predictably, brands have come calling. An Adidas deal reportedly pays Gout a base of more than $4 million over eight years.

Jon Wertheim: Were you worried when the Adidas money came that was gonna change the dynamic and the balance? 

Di Sheppard: I think the only time we’ll have trouble is if it’s a girl that I don’t like. 

Jon Wertheim: He brings home a girlfriend that doesn’t meet Coach Di’s approval. What happens? 

Di Sheppard: I’d go to mum and go, “Yea, she’s gotta go.”

By the way, if you’re looking for classic hovering sports parents, well, wrong family. Busy raising their other kids and working — dad runs a dishwashing operation at the local hospital; mom works inside the home. Gout’s parents politely decline all interview requests, ours included. In effect, they’ve deputized coach Di to help oversee their son’s ascending career — the only way she rolls, anyway. 

Jon Wertheim: I’m guessing you and helicopter parents–

Di Sheppard: No.

Jon Wertheim: –don’t get on too well?

Di Sheppard: Not at all. 

Jon Wertheim: You’re upfront about this?

Di Sheppard: Yep.

Jon Wertheim: “I’m gonna be the coach, and if you wanna hover, and you wanna share–“

Di Sheppard: Yep.

Jon Wertheim: “–in the glory, I’m probably not the coach for you.”

Di Sheppard: Yep.

Last summer, we visited Gout and Coach Di in Germany, where they held a training base in Tubingen, a sleepy college town, all uneven streets and smooth tracks. 

Jon Wertheim: I feel bad. If– we don’t want to turn an ankle on cobblestone. 

Gout Gout: Indeed.

They were fresh off Gout’s international pro debut…

COMMENTATOR: His first race as a pro in Europe, this and Gout Gout… a battle between these two… and Gout working so hard to get to him… and he gets there… Gout takes it by a meter…

At the big meet in Ostrava in the Czech Republic, he took first in the 200, shaving time off his personal best. 

Di Sheppard: I’m big on stepping stones. I’m big on, “Okay, well, we’ve got to enjoy that, but it’s a step. You’re not there yet.”

Jon Wertheim: We’re not doin’ victory laps for what you did when you were 17 years old. 

Di Sheppard: How many people run 20.04? Men. Not – not a boy, but men. So yeah, you’re– you’re there, but then he’s gotta take the next leap.

Last fall, at 17, the youngest 200-meter sprinterat the Track World Championships, gout carried great expectations into Tokyo, having garnered attention that’s hard to come by in the sport outside of the Olympics.

He placed fourth in his semi-final heat, an indication there are still levels to go.

But then just last month, the next leap: at a race in Sydney, Gout became the fastest teenager in the history of the world in the 200, running a 19.67 — a time that would have won him bronze at the 2024 Olympics. Still, he’s not getting ahead of himself.

Jon Wertheim: It strikes me you’re sprinting, but pacing your life is really important.

Gout Gout: Yeah. Like, it’s crazy to think about how you want to run as fast as possible but you don’t want to overload too much when you’re a teenager ’cause then that messes up the rest of your career. Like, you know, you got all the time in the world.

What do the next few years look like? In February, we watched him work out with local kids… not exactly a world-class stable. But gout and his unlikely coach believe that, right now, this is the best environment as he works towards future Olympics. He is a big enough deal here that he’s received perhaps the highest Australian honor: a signature line of that, ahem, delicacy Vegemite, imagine Nutella if chocolate were brown yeast.

But stardom, he says, is no goal.

Jon Wertheim: You’re okay with fame?

Gout Gout: Me personally, I don’t call it fame. I like to call it “well known in the wider community.” 

Jon Wertheim: “Well known in the wider community.”

Gout Gout: That’s right. That’s right. So I don’t really use the word “famous.” But, you know, I’m just well known.

Jon Wertheim: You’re doin’ okay with being well known in the wider community…

Gout Gout: Yeah. Yeah, I’m doin’ all right, yeah.

Produced by Jacqueline Williams. Associate producers: Mimi Lamarre and Elizabeth Germino. Edited by April Wilson.