Australian Athletics Championship: Gout Gout’s uncanny ability to capture the feeling of hope in sport

You feel it in the air pre-race when Gout Gout takes his mark, the electricity and tension is palpable right before they are both released by the starter’s pistol.

Hope. It is what sport is all about. It is why fans invest so much money, time and energy, because of what could happen.

West Coast fans will continue to shell out for jerseys, merchandise and memberships, clinging to the thought of next year, that in 12 months’ time, progress will been made and a way out of the mire materialised.

Fremantle faithful, suffering from a lifetime of let-downs, will continue to head towards Optus Stadium with a sense of optimism which flies in the face of everything they have experienced beforehand.

The 17 year-old captures the feeling of hope better than any other Australian individual athlete in some time.

To borrow a Seth Rogan line from Superbad, “He’s a freak. He’s the fastest kid alive.”

Ignore the villainous tailwinds which rained on his parade in Perth and were the only barrier to him clocking an official time at the Australian Athletics Championships; Gout not only passed the eye test with flying colours, his times speak for themselves.

A pair of 9.99 runs on the same day in the under-20 100m? A 19.84 sprint in the open 200m to win the event by more than 1.5 seconds?

It is not normal, and yet it also somehow feels strangely business as usual for a kid most of us have known of for less than six months to be pulling these shenanigans.

The thing about Gout, is it is not what he will do, but what he might do.

We have all seen the freakish times, the viral clips of him running his own race in the middle of nine lanes, unperturbed by the dust he is leaving in his wake.

At track level in Perth, there was disbelief with each Gout run, but also an unspoken acceptance this is simply just what he does.

Athletic development and progress are not linear, the future as always is unwritten, and expectation is a close neighbour of hope as it builds pressure on the rising star.

But Gout’s consistency gives Australians hope they one day might see him in the centre of an Olympic dais.

For a sports loving country, we have never consistently conquered the realm of athletics, despite the legends of Cathy Freeman, Sally Pearson and Peter Norman among others.

You just have to watch Gout to think maybe he might not end up being just an Australian great, but an international champion too.

He runs with an almost-literal spring in his step; watch him down the home straight as he shifts into 11th gear, and you notice where others are sprinting, he is almost bouncing.

There was a theatre around every Usain Bolt run, because you were ready to expect the unexpected; it is there for Gout too at such a tender age.

Gout got shout-outs from established track stars like Peter Bol, Rohan Browning and Jessica Hull throughout the weekend because of the crowd following him around, giving the sport a bigger profile.

He is re-defining the spectating experience like a (far) less violent and more lovable Happy Gilmore.

None of this is to say we should simply pencil Gout in for a few Olympic medals, a couple of Commonwealth Games ones and maybe a World Championship gong or two.

He will be pushed by others, not least by his fellow Queenslander Lachie Kennedy who will provide Gout with a formidable rivalry.

The margins for error in sprinting are perhaps the most narrow of any sport and a 100m remains the ultimate physical crapshoot.

And yet, with every race, you walk away with a grin on your face, and the thought of ‘this kid might be something.’