Adidas have signed a teenage sprinting sensation who has been branded ‘the next Usain Bolt’.
Australian Gout Gout, 16, has followed in the footsteps of the likes of Lionel Messi, Steph Curry and Patrick Mahomes in joining the Adidas stable.
‘I’m super excited to have signed with Adidas,’ he told Citius Mag.
‘I’m not stopping here. I’ll work so hard to repay the faith they have shown me. I’ll stay hungry and chase down what’s next.’
Gout was born in Queensland in 2007 to parents from South Sudan who moved to Australia two years earlier.
He is regarded as one of the most exciting track athletes in the world and a future Olympic gold medal prospect for Australia.
Gout burst onto the scene in 2014 when he ran 10.57 seconds in a 100m race at the age of just 14. That was an Australian U16 record – he also holds the record for the 200m.
âï¸ Australian teen sprint sensation Gout Gout has signed a professional contract with adidas.
This year, he came away from the 2024 World U20 Championships with a silver medal in the 200m and was part of Australiaâs 4x100m relay that finished fifth. He has run personal bests of⦠pic.twitter.com/lFA4BDKkA4
— CITIUS MAG (@CitiusMag) October 28, 2024
Less than 12 months later he broke the Australian U18 200m record with a time of 20.87 seconds in the final of the Australian Junior Athletics Championship in Brisbane.
Gout has continued his remarkable development this year, clocking a personal best time of 10.29 to win the U18 100m title at the Queensland Athletics Championships and winning the Australian U20 title a month later in 10.48.
The teenager, who is on track to compete for a medal at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, has been compared to eight-time Olympic champion Bolt, partly due to his stature but also for his scintillating times.
Gout broke the Jamaica legend’s 200m record for U16 level at this year’s U20 World Championships and Australian Olympic hero Sally Pearson recently suggested that ‘maybe we are seeing the next Usain Bolt’.
‘What you see of him on those videos is pretty impressive and, god, he’s going to be at the ripe age for the Brisbane Olympics coming around in a home country,’ Pearson said.
‘God, he’s just going to set the world on fire, I think.
‘He’s doing the blue-riband events, as well, which everyone wants to see, so that’s going to take a lot of, I think, courage from him to be able to step up and have that belief in him, which he obviously already does, but to hold onto that all through a couple of Olympic cycles that we’re going into [leading up to] Brisbane.
‘I think it’s very special for Australian sport and the Australian community to be able to see someone who could be quite dominant in Brisbane in the blue-riband events in the athletics.
‘It’s going to just be electric.’
Responding to the comparisons to Bolt, Gout said: ‘It’s pretty cool.
‘Usain Bolt is arguably the greatest athlete of all time and just being compared to him is a great feeling.
‘Obviously, I’m Gout Gout so I’m trying to make a name for myself. If I can get to the level he was, that would be a great achievement.’
Gout’s coach at Ipswich Grammar School, Diane Sheppard, has also discussed her first thoughts about the highly-rated athlete.
‘Six or eight months ago, he looked like one of those things that blow around in car yards,’ she said previously. ‘His arms were out of control.
‘They were pushing a rugby kid at me, but I saw him run around and he got right up on his toes. He is a great kid from a great family.
‘My biggest thing with the kids is about being humble, and he has got it in bucket loads.’
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