‘A genetic outlier’: The teenager faster than Usain Bolt – and getting faster

The next Usain Bolt. In the nine years since his retirement, plenty of would-be successors have been likened to the legendary sprinter. None have truly lived up to the comparison.

Gout Gout – remember the name – is the latest incumbent of a moniker he and those around him are keen to shake off. The problem with that is he is already faster than Bolt was as a teenager leading to suggestions the Jamaican’s otherworldly 200m world record could finally fall.

Currently, the 18-year-old Australian with the wide smile and rapid legs is far from a household name and yet two weeks ago ran 19.67 seconds for half a lap of the track. Bolt wasn’t that rapid until the age of 22, just a month before he won Olympic gold for the first time.

And the echoes of Bolt don’t stop with simply being precocious teenagers. Watch footage of them and they boast similar running styles with long strides, a lower cadence and immense power – even Bolt has admitted to the likeness. Plus, there is the joy in their running and the almost laissez-faire attitude to life around it.

Gout is only three months into life outside of school and there are no guarantees he will translate his pace from the junior to senior ranks as he partially navigates that this season. Bolt himself struggled with the transition and in a recent interview with CNN warned his running doppelganger may follow suit.

“I remember coming out of high school, going on the circuit, I felt I was on top of the world because I was winning and running good,” Bolt recalled. “And when I got on the circuit, I didn’t win one race.”

Gout’s agent, James Templeton, remembers laying eyes on him in person for the first time as a 14-year-old. For him, the comparisons are more fitting to David Rudisha, the 800m world record holder who Templeton first saw run on a dirt track in Kenya aged 16.

Early on, he knew Rudisha would break 1.41 for his event, for Gout the target is under 19.5 seconds, which only six men have ever achieved before.

“I don’t make any comparisons to Usain, I shy away from them,” Templeton says. “But with Gout and Rudisha, I knew early that both were something special.”

The hype surrounding Gout is monstrous. Templeton has had to swat away numerous short-term sponsorship deals, his aim being to build four or five big brands around his athlete. Already, Adidas are on board, so too closer to him the Australian breakfast staple Vegemite.

And Gout is also learning off another Adidas athlete in reigning Olympic 100m champion Noah Lyles. He is currently training with Lyles in Florida ahead of runs at the Bislett Games in Oslo in June before July’s Prefontaine Classic and then the World Under-20 Championships come August.

What makes the youngster so good? Sprint coaches talk of the downforce he’s able to produce, the stiff ankles he runs with and the power he can put out for a relatively thin frame. Freak isn’t quite right; Templeton calls him “a genetic outlier”.

Team GB’s former Olympic and world champion Adam Gemili was well versed in racing Bolt during his own career. Watching Gout, there is excitement as well as the inevitable echoes of Bolt.

“When you see him, he’s so bouncy and raw and elastic and springy which is why people are taking such a liking to him,” he said. “It’s such a lovely running style, it looks like how you run when you’re young and free.”

And yet he still sees room for improvement which will come as he bulks up into adulthood: “There’s always places to make improvements especially in the 200m: how he attacks the bends and how he distributes his energy helping him run faster times when he’s fitter and stronger enabling him to maintain his top speed better.”

For Gemili, the key to Gout’s ongoing progression is keeping fit while getting stronger as well as learning how to become a championship performer – quintessentially Bolt – and keeping mentally tough when up against the best in the world.

The Briton thrived in the step-up from the junior to senior ranks, and expects Gout to do the same. As for bettering Bolt’s 19.19 world record, he said: “For me, I don’t think so.”

Templeton, meanwhile, won’t talk about targets beyond the 19.5 although he is very much of the view that the sky is the limit.

And don’t expect his athlete to get too big for his boots. Instilled in him by his parents, manager and coach Di Sheppard is staying humble, which is also very much in his personality according to those around him.

Yet he does not lack for the showman’s exuberance as shown in the manner of celebration with that 19.67. It was all very Bolt.