The Australian sprint sensation was in Florida to learn from Noah Lyles and his coach Lance Brauman and has returned home with a lot of assurances about his career.
Australian wonderkid Gout Gout is back in Queensland where he has returned to school but for two weeks last month, he was in Florida in the United States, learning from the very best.
Gout Gout, accompanied by his coach Di Sheppard, manager James Templeton and training partner Jonathon Kasiano (a 60m runner and long jumper) joined the National Training Centre where world and Olympics champion Noah Lyles trains under coach Lance Brauman.
The trip was sponsored by Adidas, who signed a contract with Gout Gout last year before he even turned 17, and also works with Lyles, and the young man learnt a lot in his two weeks in the US, returning to Australia with lots of assurances.
Gout has earned comparisons with Jamaican sprint great Usain Bolt, having broken the legend’s 200m record for 16-year-olds when he ran 20.04 seconds, a day after running 10.04 seconds in 100m, but not everything about him is perfect, even if the world has been made to think so.
Who excactly is Gout Gout? The Australian sprinting wonderkid set to start training with Noah Lyles and is earning comparisons to Usain Bolt?
It is why his team saw it fit to have a second opinion and where better to get that than from the biggest star of them all. In Florida, Brauman assessed Gout while he also received advice from Lyles.
One of the things that the teenager has yet to get right is his take off as he is still slow off the blocks which is down to his age and his tight Achilles tendons.
“Man to start like a man you need to get a man’s ass,” said Brauman over the teen star’s take off, as quoted by Australia’s Sunday Morning Herald, shrugging off any doubts about the young sprinter.
It was a message that resonated with what Sheppard had told Gout over his starts, assuring that he will get better with age and there is no need to hurry things up.
“It wasn’t about sitting down and having those long one-on-one conversations. That was not what it was about. Noah gave him little hints here and there when they were training, but it was more about being in the environment,” Sheppard said.
“I got Lance and one of his assistant coaches to look at his movement patterns when we were in the gym because I was a bit concerned at something I had seen, and it was more walking away with the reassurance that they saw what I saw and what we have done was on point.”
Sheppard was also delighted that Gout and his training mate were never fazed by being in the presence of superstars, a good sign that they can hold their own when they come up against the best.
“The boys were respectful of their environment, but they were not intimidated by it. And that was comforting for me, to know they can go to the next level and feel comfortable in the company of the best in the world and not intimidated or like they don’t belong,” he added.
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“It was good because you go into this environment, and you think, ‘Am I going to be out of my depth?’
“This is an environment we have not been in before so we are going to be a bit reserved and we sat back and observed at the start but when they asked them to join them, the boys jumped into training and fitted right in and realised we are not doing much different. For me, it was positive knowing moving forward, we are on the right path.”
Gout is now back to school at Ipswich Grammar in Queensland where he has started year 12 but he can learn and thereafter train, knowing that everything is okay as he plots how to bring down Lyles and others later in the year at the 2025 World Championships in Tokyo.
