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“He’s extraordinary”: Gout Gout bursts at world champs after shaky start
Andrew Slevison • September 18th, 2025 9:02 am
Australian athletics prodigy Gout Gout has advanced to the semi-finals of the 200 metres at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo.
The 17-year-old Queenslander required a top-three finish in his heat to progress and did so with a time of 20.23s, running third behind Jamaican Bryan Levell and Zimbabwe’s Makanakaishe Charamba.
Gout’s time was the 12th-fastest of the 200m heats and he will now battle 23 other sprinters in the semis.
After the start he was quickly headed by Levell and could have melted under the pressure but he held midway through the race before finishing strongly in third.
“A lot of fun, probably the most fun I’ve had this whole year,” Gout told Australian Athletics.
“The biggest difference is the competition level. It’s definitely the top notch.
“I definitely put pressure on myself a lot, but at the end of the day, I’m the youngest in the 200 so I’ll just do my thing.
“A young bull trying to get into the final and just doing my thing. Just run home like the wind.”
Gout will run in the 200m semi-finals from 10:02pm AEST this Thursday night (tonight) with the target of advancing to the eight-man final.
He says the goal is to run sub 20 seconds in the final. His personal best is 20.02s.
Legendary broadcaster Bruce McAvaney felt that Gout will take plenty of learnings from racing against the very best in the world.
“He was shaky early, he would have been rattled for a moment but he held it together,” said McAvaney on SBS.
“Gout has run 20.23, job done. He is going to learn so much from all of that.”
Fellow commentator and former Olympian Tamsyn Manou described Gout’s performance as “extraordinary”.
“That was a lot of pressure that was on Gout Gout’s shoulders,” Manou said.
“He’s only 17 years of age and he should be at school, but he’s at the opening round of the World Championships’ 200 metes and he’s made it through automatically.
“That was a lot of pressure and he just did it. He’s extraordinary.”
His fellow Aussie sprinter Torrie Lewis ran a personal best 22.56s in her 200m heat to qualify for the semi-finals. Her previous best was 22.65s.
The 20-year-old admitted she wasn’t at her best in the 100m heat on Sunday night but was proud to bounce back strongly in the 200m.
“Last time I put so much pressure on it and had so many expectations,” Lewis said.
“It was so meaningful to me, that race. I had so many high expectations coming into it, I really thought I could make the final. So I was not looking at anything – I was just looking at did I make that final? And I did not and, to me, that was a failure.
“I knew if I had gone up to the media box then I would have cried, and I didn’t want to cry on TV.
“(Tonight) I was just trying to see how it goes and run hard.”
Lewis will run in the semi-finals at 10:24pm AEST on Thursday night.
