Channel Seven broadcaster Bruce McAvaney lauds Gout Gout ahead of 2025 Australian Athletics Championships

Veteran Channel Seven broadcaster Bruce McAvaney says the “unprecedented” hype around burgeoning sprint star Gout Gout is reminiscent of the wave of support Cathy Freeman experienced on the eve of the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

And ahead of 17-year-old phenomenon Gout’s appearance at this week’s Australian Athletics Championships in Perth, McAvaney believes a budding rivalry with fellow young Queensland sprint sensation Lachie Kennedy can spur the pair on to greater heights.

Gout will be the name on everyone’s lips when he takes to the WA Athletics Stadium track this week to compete in the under-20s 100m on Thursday and men’s 200m on Sunday.

The Queensland schoolboy has already run the second-quickest 200m of all-time by an under-18 — faster even than an underage Usain Bolt — when he clocked a blistering 20.04 to shatter Peter Norman’s almost 50-year-old Australian record in December.

McAvaney said there had been no Australian track athlete to fully capture the kind of public attention seen in the lead up to Freeman’s iconic 400m gold medal in Sydney — but the interest in Gout was similar.

“There wouldn’t be anyone that has an athletics background, that people recognise as knowing the sport, that wouldn’t have been asked about Gout as we were asked about Cathy leading into Sydney,” McAvaney told The West Australian.

“With Gout, it’s so much about what he might do in Perth this weekend, at the Stawell Gift, at World Championships in Tokyo this year, but the end game for him, for a lot of Australians, is Brisbane 2032.

“Cathy had all of that surrounding Sydney; she was already an Olympic silver medallist, had a great rivalry of Marie-Jose Peric, had all those things happening and that was a home Olympics.

“For this young fellow to have this much attention is unprecedented.”

Amid an all-star cast descending on Perth — including dual Olympic high jump silver medallist Nicola Olyslagers and Paris Olympics 1500m runner-up Jess Hull — the anticipated 200m duel between Gout and Kennedy promises to be must-watch television.

Less than a fortnight ago, Gout was upstaged by 21-year-old Kennedy by four hundredths of a second when the pair went head-to-head in the 200m at the Maurie Plant meet in Melbourne.

And just over a month ago, Kennedy ran a personal best in the 100m of 10.03 in Perth, eclipsing Gout’s best result of 10.04.

McAvaney said the duo’s showdown in the men’s 200m on Sunday promised to be spectacular.

“It’s so important, and it is a rivalry, even with four years difference in their age. Melinda Gainsford-Taylor had that with Cathy Freeman . . . we’ve had so many of these, and they are so good for one another.

“He (Lachie) has run an Australian record for 60m, he got very close in Perth to breaking 10 seconds. He’s gone to the World Indoor Championships and been beaten by one-hundredth of a second for a gold medal in the 60m — we’ve never had anyone do anything like that.

“To have the both of them together is a gift for both of them and for their future and for their progress, and for all of us to watch and take an interest in.

“Let the rivalry continue.”

McAvaney said so much of the attention on Gout was around what the future holds, in particular, what it means for the looming Brisbane 2032 Olympics.

“A lot of it is potential and what might be, and we all dream: we all want to have an Australian that is extra special in events we don’t have a lot of success in,” he said.

“None of us know the future, and in sport, and particularly an individual sport like this, there’s no certainties.

“It’s that potential, anticipation, the realisation of what he’s achieved already and the understanding that he is the fastest 16 year-old over 200m of all time — and the guy that he was quicker than was the most famous one of them all in Usain Bolt.”

WATCH GOUT GOUT IN ACTION STARTING THURSDAY ON 7PLUS