He’s 16 and hyped as Usain Bolt’s successor – but Australia’s Gout Gout is keeping his feet on the ground

It’s tricky being the next big thing. There’s all the excitement and promise, but also a truckload of expectation. This is the minefield 16-year-old Australian sprinter Gout Gout and his coach Di Sheppard have been negotiating this year – ever since viral video emerged of the young Queenslander destroying a field of schoolboy sprinters with a long-limbed stride eerily reminiscent of Usain Bolt.

The Bolt comparisons have come thick and fast, but Gout, the third of seven children born to South Sudanese immigrants Monica and Bona Gout, has tried to take it in stride. He agrees it’s “pretty cool’’ just to be put in the same sentence as the greatest sprinter in history, but makes it plain this is not what he’s here for. “I’m Gout Gout, so I’m trying make a name for myself.”

Related: Australian sprint prodigy Gout Gout blazes to new 200m heights

The internet buzz began before Gout had left Queensland, but it has grown with each glimpse the wider world has seen of him. In August, he won a silver medal in the 200m at the World Under-20 Championships in Lima, Peru, where he raced teenagers up to two years older than him, while clocking a personal best time of 20.60s.

That was all Adidas needed to see to sign him to a professional contract in October, but he underlined his potential less than a week later when he rocketed to a personal best time of 20.29s at the Queensland All Schools Athletics Championships in Brisbane. That run, an Australian under-18 and under-20 record, was the fastest by any Australian for more than 30 years and boosted him to fourth on the national all-time list, almost within striking distance of 1968 Olympic silver medallist Peter Norman’s revered benchmark of 20.06s. Remember, Gout is still just 16.

Olympic champion Sally Pearson and renowned commentator Bruce McAvaney are among those in the athletics community frothing over his potential, in the knowledge that Gout should reach his peak around the time of the Brisbane Olympic Games in 2032. That accident of timing will only intensify the spotlight in the years to come.

Sheppard and Gout’s manager James Templeton have no doubt he will be Australia’s fastest man – and soon. But in the meantime, they are working hard to keep his feet on the ground and shield him from the pitfalls that come with early celebrity in the sports world.

Sheppard relates the story of a conversation she had with the schoolboy a week after returning from Peru. Gout turned to her and said: “What we did was pretty big, hey?” She agreed, responding: “Yeah, it was really big, but we aren’t acting like it, are we?” He just nodded and said, “No, we’re not.”

“We both knew it was a significant moment, but we also understood that it was just one part of a much longer path,” she says.

Sheppard has worked with generations of teenagers as the athletics coach at Ipswich grammar school, a historic private school based in the working-class stronghold west of Brisbane. She first spied Gout as a 13-year-old tagging along with one of his mates to a try out for the GPS Championships in 2020.

“I saw him running on the oval and there was just something about him and the way he moved,” she says. “I couldn’t pinpoint it, but gut instinct just screamed at me: who’s that kid?”

Sheppard has history as a talent spotter, having guided another Sudanese-Australian teenager Joseph Deng into the sport 10 years earlier. Deng went on to break the long-standing Australian 800m record and was a Paris Olympian this year. Despite her excitement about Gout’s potential, Sheppard reeled him into athletics slowly. For the first eight months, he trained only twice a week and continued to play football. Then she sat him down and told him: “Dude, I think you can go all the way.”

However, she has continued to bring him along carefully, managing a growth spurt, focussing on his technique and training discipline. She’s strong on athlete accountability “because it’s their journey – you can’t make somebody into something unless they want to do it”.

Even so, the speed of his development has confounded her. She was expecting him to run around 20.50s this year, but he is well ahead of schedule, so she’s now more wary of making predictions. “I had already pencilled in a record [20.06] for 2026, but it could happen earlier if we stay on track,” she says.

So far she thinks he’s coping “really really well” with the gathering hoopla. “I have talked to Gout about a lot of this stuff for the past two years, because they need to know. You can’t hide anything from them because otherwise it’s just going to come up and whack them in the back of the head. So you have to keep them grounded. Everything you do is a stepping stone and we are a long way from the top.”

His naturally laidback personality has helped in that endeavour. “He’s a very easygoing, happy kid,” Sheppard says. “He’s extremely good to have around our squad because he’s always upbeat.”

Gout will return to the track for the Australian All Schools Championships in Brisbane this week, where he will run the 100m on Friday and the 200m on Saturday. His focus will be on breaking Sebastian Sultana’s national under-18 record of 10.27s in the 100m. He comes in with a best of 10.29, set in March, but given his substantial improvement over 200m since then, he should also run much quicker over the shorter distance, given the right conditions.

But Sheppard and Templeton also have an eye on a significant milestone in the 200m. The qualifying standard for next year’s World Athletics Championships in Tokyo is 20.16s, while Usain Bolt’s best under-18 mark is 20.13s. Neither seems out of the question for him this summer.

After the school athletics season finishes this month, Gout will continue his sprint education in the toughest training ground on the planet. Through their mutual sponsor Adidas, he and Sheppard have secured an invitation from Olympic 100m champion Noah Lyles and his coach Lance Brauman to join their training group in Florida for a few weeks in January.

Sheppard says it will be a learning opportunity for them both – to experience the world’s best performance environment and understand what it takes to reach that level. She also hopes to “pick up some hints on how to handle things when the media doesn’t go your way”.

She admits the leap in company will be “a bit surreal”, but she won’t allow it to distract them from the work still needed if Gout is to ascend into the rare air occupied by the fastest men in the world. “We know the job is not done yet – we haven’t even reached base camp of Everest,” she says.

And if her efforts are not enough to keep him grounded, those of his family will be. The word is that Gout may not end up as the fastest in his family. “There’s a little one who’s 10 – he’s like, ‘I’m going to be better than my brother’,” Sheppard says.