Teenage phenom Gout Gout concludes a breakout track season in Australia

The kind of pace that propelled teenage sprinting phenom Gout Gout to break decades-old Australian records and earned him an invitation to train with Olympic champion Noah Lyles ended up costing him in his season finale.

The handicapper's calculations on Monday achieved what few of Gout's rivals could do all southern summer, making it too difficult for the 17-year-old high school senior to win.

As a back marker at the Stawell Gift - a 120-meter handicap race contested on the Easter weekend since 1878 on a turf track in regional Victoria state - Gout missed out on the final when he placed second in his semifinal race. Only the heat winners advance.

Runners start from handicap marks according to their recent form in the 100 meters. And so John Evans, who started from a mark 8.75 meters (yards) ahead of Gout and five lanes across to the right, narrowly won their semifinal race. Evans then went on win the final.

The meet was broadcast live across Australia on commercial television in high expectation of a showdown between Gout and 21-year-old Lachlan Kennedy, a silver medalist in the 60-meters at the World Indoor Championships in China last month. The national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corp., featured the meet in a live blog on its website.

Gout had run wind-assisted sub-10-second times in the 100 and a sub-20 200 over the last month to win national titles. Those times don’t go into the official records - because the tailwinds were above the allowable threshold - but his titles and swift progress through the senior ranks have captivated Australians and renewed interest in the domestic track and field scene.

At age 16 last December, Gout ran 20.04 seconds to win the 200 at the national high school championships and break a 56-year-old national record over that distance set by 1968 Olympic silver medalist Peter Norman.

The fledgling rivalry between young sprinters Gout and Kennedy already has Australians excited about the 2032 Summer Games, which were awarded in 2021 to Brisbane, Australia,

For Gout, who lives in nearby Ipswich, it will be a hometown Olympics. He’ll be 24 in 2032, and he’s already being compared with legendary sprinter Usain Bolt based on their times as teenagers. Even Lyles said in a podcast conversation with Gout that it could be the "perfect storm" for the young Australian runner.

"That’s the end goal for sure," Gout said, "Yeah, 2032, that's what I'm at for sure."

For now, he’ll take a quick break, concentrate on his high school studies and then start preparing for the world championships in Tokyo in September. On Monday, he just soaked up the atmosphere for a while.

"It's definitely great. This is a great meet. The crowd, the people, the track, everything," he said. "It feels pretty incredible. People come from all around Australia to watch me run."

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