Gout Gout (born 29 December 2007) is an Australian sprinter.[1] He is the Australian and Oceanian record holder in the 200 metres, with a time of 20.04 seconds set in 2024.[2]
Early life and background
Gout was born in Ipswich, Queensland to parents from South Sudan who moved to Australia two years before he was born. According to Gout's father Bona, when he and his wife Monica fled South Sudan for Egypt, before moving to Australia, the family name was misspelled during translation from Arabic. The proper spelling should be "Guot"[note 1], though Australian records have not been corrected. Thus, "Gout" remains his official name.[3][4]
The holder of the Australian under-16 100m and 200m records, Gout ran 10.57 seconds for the 100m as a fourteen-year-old in 2022.[7] The following April, as the age of 15, Gout first broke the Australian under-18 men's 200m record. He ran 20.87 seconds to win the under-18 men's 200m final at the Australian Junior Athletics Championships in Brisbane in April 2023.[8][9][10]
Gout ran a personal best time of 10.29s to win the U18 Boys 100m at the Queensland Athletics Championships in Brisbane, in March 2024.[11] He won the Australian U20 100m title in Adelaide in April 2024, running a time of 10.48 seconds.[12] He represented Australia at the 2024 World Athletics U20 Championships in Lima, Peru, where he won the silver medal in the 200 metres in August 2024 in a personal best time of 20.60 (-0.7m/s).[13][14] On 18 October he competed in the 2024 GPS Track & Field Championships, winning the 100m, 200m and 400m treble with times of 10.36 seconds for the 100m, 20.86 seconds for the 200m, and 47.57 seconds for the 400m.[15]
On 28 October, he signed his first contract with Adidas.[16] At the Queensland All-Schools Championships in the first weekend of November, he clocked a time of 20.29 (+1.2 m/s) in the heats of the 200m. In addition to achieving the Oceanian U20 record, he became the fourth fastest Australian over this distance and the fastest since 1993. This performance placed him fourth in the world all-time youth performance rankings, behind Erriyon Knighton, Usain Bolt and Puripol Boonson.[17]
On 6 December, at the 2024 Australian All Schools Athletics Championship, he ran a personal best time of 10.04 (+3.4 m/s) in the 100m to win his heat.[18][19] This time was the fourth fastest U18 time in the world and the fifth fastest all-time by an Australian.[20] He backed this up by winning the final in 10.17 (+0.9 m/s), breaking the Australian U18 record which had been held by Australia’s reigning men’s senior champion Sebastian Sultana.[19][21] The next day, in the 200m final, Gout ran 20.04 seconds. This time ranked as the second-fastest U18 performance of all time, and made Gout only the second U18 athlete to surpass Usain Bolt's record in this category. He also broke the Australian record, held since 1968 by Peter Norman.[2]
