‘It’s easier when you’re young’: Bolt on Gout, and Aussies to watch at the worlds

The world athletics championships begin on Saturday in Tokyo, and plenty of Australians will be vying for glory. Usain Bolt, the greatest sprinter of all time, will have his eye on Australian schoolboy sprint sensation Gout Gout, and who can blame him.

Before we run through the Australians and events to watch, here’s what Bolt had to say about Gout, who has earned comparisons with the Jamaican sprinting great after a string of fast times over the past year, with expectation in Australia already building he could win gold on home soil at the 2032 Brisbane Olympics.

Bolt said there was no doubt the 17-year-old, who will make his world championships debut in the 200m in Tokyo next week, had talent, but that, on its own, was not enough.

“If he continues on this track it’s going to be good, but it’s all about getting everything right. I mean, it’s never just easy,” he told reporters in Tokyo on Thursday.

“It’s always easier when you’re younger because I was there, I used to do great things when I was young, but the transition to senior from junior is always tougher.

“It’s all about if you get the right coach, the right people around you, if you’re focused enough, so there will be a lot of factors to determine if he’s going to be great, and if he’s going to continue on the same trajectory to a championship or Olympics.”

Despite also setting age-group records as a youngster, Bolt did not really make an impact on a global scale until he was 22, when he broke the 100m world record twice and won the sprint double at the Beijing Olympics.

He retired as the sport’s biggest star in 2017 with eight Olympic and 11 world championships gold medals, his record 9.58 seconds for the dash set in Berlin in 2009 still standing.

The 39-year-old, who added he could have run 9.42 in the carbon-plated “super-spikes” today’s sprinters were using, says he will always welcome new talent like Gout breaking through in the sport he loved.

“He’s very talented, with the times he’s running now, and he’s really been doing well,” he added.

“That’s something that you love to see because you want athletes to do well. The more athletes do well, the bigger the sport is, and I’m always a supporter of track and field getting bigger and doing bigger things.”

Japan’s National Stadium will host the championships, having been fanless four years ago during the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Olympics.
AAP with agencies

The athletes to watch

Michael Gleeson

The Australians

Previous best performance: Which do you want? The Australian Athletics All Schools Championships last year, when he ran 20.04s and broke Peter Norman’s long-standing open age national record, which had stood since the 1968 Mexico Olympics when Norman won silver? Or Ostrava this year, when he ran 20.02 seconds – the second-fastest time in the world ever by a 17-year-old, and only bettered by American Erriyon Knighton (who is currently at the Court of Arbitration for Sport over a positive drug test).

Why tune in for Tokyo? This is huge for Gout because it is the first time the schoolboy star will face the fastest men in the world in a championship. There is so much hype around the Australian youngster, and for good reason – he has twice broken Usain Bolt’s world junior records and has a running style even the greatest sprinter in the world recognises as looking similar to his own. But now he will run in front of packed stadia against the best and the fastest, the bigger and stronger race-hardened men.

So far, he has been undaunted by each new step he has taken. The greater the attention, the more he has thrived. The higher the pressure, the further he has lifted. Last year he went to the world junior championships and raced after a video went viral around the world about him. He won silver and was only beaten by an athlete 18 months his senior.

He ran well that day, but the fact he was beaten by an older athlete with even a slightly more mature body was a telling reminder to be cautious over what to expect when a schoolboy faces men. Never mind the 18-month age gap from juniors – in Tokyo, he will face fields featuring Noah Lyles, the back to back world champion; another American Kenny Bednarek, the Olympic silver medallist who has the second-quickest time in the world this year after Lyles;, and Letsile Tobogo, the Paris gold medallist. Each of them has multiple times under 20 seconds this year (Lyles and Bednarek four times each, Tobogo three times.)

Previous best performance: Seriously, which one do you want to talk about? She won silver medals at each of the last two Olympics, she just won the Diamond League and set a new national record, she won bronze at the last world championships in Budapest and gold at the last two world indoors, including in China earlier this year. She is just never not on the podium.

Why tune in for Tokyo? This event, as much as the athlete, is compelling viewing. At the last four major championships – the Olympics in Paris and Tokyo and the world championships in Budapest and Oregon – 10 of the 12 available medals have been won by just three women. Those three women are Olyslagers, compatriot Eleanor Patterson and Ukraine’s Yaroslava Mahuchikh. At the last two in Paris and Budapest, the Ukrainian has won gold and the Australians have traded turns being silver and bronze medallists. In Paris, Olyslagers won silver and Patterson bronze, while they flipped the medals in Budapest. Since then though, just weeks ago on August 27, Olyslagers broke the national record again when she cleared 2.04 metres in Zurich to win the prestigious Diamond League.

Previous best performance: Patterson is always on, or threatening to be on, the podium. She won bronze at the Paris Olympics last year and at the last two world championships she has won silver (in Budapest two years ago) and gold (in Oregon a year earlier.)

Why tune in for Tokyo? See above. For the same reason you have to watch Olyslagers, Patterson will get you tuning in to the high jump because of the three-way dance with Ukraine’s Mahuchikh. Her best this year has been a 1.99m in Slovakia, just shy of her personal best 2.02m, which itself is a best effort short of Olyslagers and Mahuchikh. But as her results also show, competition jumping is different and in competition Patterson finds ways to win.

Previous best performance: Last year at the Paris Olympics, Hull stunned the world with a gutsy silver medal in a time of 3:52.56. It was a big jump from the Tokyo Olympics, when she made the final but finished 11th in a time 10 seconds slower than she ran four years later in Tokyo.

Why tune in for Tokyo? This was an event that felt like it was off limits to Australians until Hull came along. Dominated by African runners, it felt the best we could hope to do in the 1500m was make up numbers in the finals. Hull changed that. Her silver in Paris behind Kenyan star Faith Kipyegon, the two time Olympic champion, and four-time world champion established her as a genuine world contender.

Previous best performance: In January last year Lewis became the fastest Australian woman ever when she ran 11.10s and broke Mel Breen’s 100m record. At the Paris Olympics, at just 19 years old, Lewis only ran the 200m sprint – not the 100m as well – and made it to the semi-finals. After the Olympics, she went to the world under-20 championships, where she won silver in the 200m.

Why tune in for Tokyo? After a bad Achilles tendon injury earlier this year Lewis, who was the face of Australia’s Olympics team heading into Paris last year, showed she was back to her best in Slovakia last month by running 11.16s for the 100m. She also ran a 22.69s for the 200m just last month. Racing, not training, to get herself competition-fit, she showed she is tracking for good things in Tokyo.

Previous best performance: Racing in Poland last month, 20-year-old Hollingsworth set a new national record when she ran 1:57.67. And last year she won silver at the world under-20 championships in the 800m.

Why tune in for Tokyo? Hollingsworth is a bona fide rising star of Australian athletics, and of world 800m running. She made it through to the semi-finals at her first Olympics in Paris last year at just 19, and followed that up by winning silver at the world under-20 championships. While Gout draws the attention, Hollingsworth, like Lewis in the sprints, is part of a golden generation of athletes emerging in Australia. Get in on the ground level, as she is only going to get better. While she is more likely to be a medal contender at the LA and Brisbane Olympics, she is a precocious enough talent now to be striking for a finals place, and anyone who makes the final is a medal chance.

Previous best performance: Denny finally broke through for a major championships medal when he won bronze at the Olympics last year after twice falling short by just a whisker at the world champs in Budapest and Eugene, Oregon. He set a new national record earlier this year when he threw 74.78m at a meet in the US.

Why tune in for Tokyo? Who doesn’t like watching big men hurl plates? When he won bronze in Paris, Denny threw 69.31m. Having struggled to break through the 70m barrier, he went to the US and cleared 70m three times in a meet in Oklahoma, including his national record throw. Proving it was not just a one-off effort, he cleared 70m this year at a meeting in Turkey.

Must-watch events

Why you should be watching: It’s the world’s fastest men in the biggest race of the year – why wouldn’t you be watching? It’s also the race that famously has the fastest mouths to match the fastest legs. That means it has Noah Lyles and Kishane Thompson trash-talking each other.

Since Usain Bolt retired, Lyles has assumed the mantle of athletics’ biggest drawcard, which is a different thing to fastest and best ever. At the last world championships in Budapest, he delivered a Bolt-like performance when he won the 100m/200m sprint double to assert himself as the world’s best sprinter.

And at last year’s Olympics, he ran a personal-best 9.79s to win gold. But – and here comes the kicker to the rivalry bit – he ran the same time to hundredths of a second as Thompson. The pair were split in a photo finish by .005s. Lyles ran 9.784s to Thompson’s 9.789s.

“It shook my existence,” Thompson told Netflix later about the narrow loss.

Thompson beat Lyles in their only head-to-head race since then – 9.87s to 9.90s – last month.

What did Lyles say about that loss? “He’s a great competitor. He’s a very fast man … [but] I still feel like he’s in my pocket. Next time we race, I’ll have something even better.”

Hearing of the comments, Thompson responded: “My pocket’s going to be so far ahead, so let’s see”.

Thompson, who also ran the fastest time of any man for a decade with his 9.75s, has declared Bolt’s world record 9.58s is under threat in Tokyo.

Why you should be watching: The Swedish Olympic gold medallist is to pole vault what Bolt was to sprinting. He is clearly the greatest the world has ever seen. He has set 13 world records – three this year alone. He hasn’t been beaten in two years and 35 competitions. He has cleared 6m in 13 of his 15 competitions this year, and has cleared that milestone mark in pole vault, which is like a 100m sprinter breaking 10 seconds, more than 100 times.

His personal best (6.29m) is 21cms higher than his biggest rival for a medal, Greece’s Emmanouil Karalis (6.08m). Australia’s Kurtis Marschall, who won bronze in Budapest two years ago, has the fourth-best jump in the world this year (5.93m).

The reason to tune in here is not to see if Duplantis wins, but if he can beat his own world record … again.

Why you should be watching: The Dutch star is aiming for a second successive world title after winning gold in Budapest and silver at the worlds in Oregon before that. Olympic champion and world record holder Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone is racing the 400m flat, so there won’t be a head-to-head clash with Bol.

Australia’s Torrie Lewis has been training with Bol’s group near Arnhem in the Netherlands this year and gushes about the Dutch star.

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