School’s out: Watch Gout Gout storm home in a stunning victory lap

Brisbane: Gout Gout’s last individual race as a schoolboy was a valedictory dance, a cap-and-gown farewell to schools running with a comfortable win.

Australia’s superstar student runner jogged to victory to win the 400 metres at the Queensland GPS meet in 46.14 seconds, surpassing the old record (47.57) for Ipswich Grammar. Brisbane Grammar’s Seth Kennedy impressed in second with his 46.64.

Gout didn’t run his pet 100-metre and 200-metre events at this meet, but he did anchor the 4x100-metre relay and had one more record in him as he signed off – storming home to net Ipswich’s new record of 41.30, bettering their mark set last year. Gout relished in embracing a raucous crowd of followers, and vowed to take the world by storm after the end of his school career.

“I’ve been at this school since grade 7 and they’ve definitely helped me. It’s a great school, it’s the school where I met my friends and teachers around me. It feels great, and I just can’t wait to go on the next journey,” Gout said after the 400m.

“For me, it’s that world stage, I just experienced that a couple of months ago … so that’s the next step for sure.”

At the Queensland GPS, or the Great Public Schools Association of Queensland, which is the grandiose title for the Brisbane schools comp largely made up of private schools, Gout affirmed that not only does he fairly belong running against the world’s best men, it is unfair that he runs against local boys his own age.

That isn’t unexpected, given that, even for the world juniors next year, when he races the world’s best boys of his age, he is already the outright favourite for gold. Gout won silver at the last world juniors and was only beaten by a youngster 18 months older than him.

So pity then the local Brisbane kids who had the misfortune of racing Gout in their final races as schoolboys. Or the good fortune really, for they will doubtless now have a lifetime to recall the day they raced him.

Gout’s 200-metre competition record of 20.86 set last year at the Queensland Sport and Athletics Centre spectacle was broken by Kennedy (20.64) earlier in the day.

While Gout has a personal best of 20.02, Kennedy’s charge was made all the more remarkable given he was coming off a lengthy injury lay-off.

The teenager celebrated with an elated fist pump to the crowd as he edged ahead of Ipswich’s Jonathon Kasiano – Gout’s best mate, relay ally and 2025 under-18s 200m Australian Athletics Championships victor.

“I hadn’t sprinted in 15 weeks coming off the hamstring injury and I missed the GPS rugby season, so I was just happy to be back and happy to be running well,” Kennedy said.

“I have a great rehab team at home and here with BGS … we all came together. We tried to rush back to play rugby, and then that didn’t work out, so I really just tried to get this one done.

“It’s paid off.”

Kasiano would eventually rally to claim the 100 metres in Gout’s absence (10.50), while Kennedy would ultimately face the 17-year-old champion in the 400 metres, the event he won at the under-18 Australian Athletics Championships in Perth.

The 4x100m relay team on Friday night also included Kasiano, Brett Dull and Kev Weribone. After the race, Gout was jubilant – surging towards a crew of fellow Ipswich students he described as “the OG”.

“It was great, something everyone wants to do is compete with your boys, go out there and win,” Gout said of his final race as a high school student.

“This is my cohort … these are the boys I’ve pretty much grown up with and become a young man with.”

Gout, the emerging global phenomenon proved a class above, with his sights now set on delivering the nation its first men’s sprinting Olympic gold medal at the 2028 Los Angeles Games.

The South Sudanese-Australian returned to Brisbane from September’s World Championships in Tokyo flushed with insights into what heights he will need to attain to make such lofty goals a reality.

The next three years will now be spent by athletics followers salivating at the thought of what he and 21-year-old Queensland Paris Olympian Lachlan Kennedy – whose 100-metre best of 9.98 is the second best among Australian men in history – could achieve.

The door may be closed on Gout’s schoolboy days, but the legacy he will leave on his alma mater – and Brisbane in general – will resonate, with his fan base growing by the day.

“It definitely feels great to know I have a very big fan base, especially from all ages of very, very young to adults like yourselves,” Gout said.

“I haven’t sprinted since worlds, so I can’t wait to go out there with my friends and enjoy the moment.”

What was a starker measure of the precocious excellence of Gout than his performance against the world’s fastest men at the recent World Athletics Championships in Tokyo was his effort against his current actual peers – schoolboys. Effort is a slightly misplaced word for effort suggests the raising of a sweat, which Gout seemingly did not. Not really.

Only a month ago in Tokyo he raced the world’s fastest men over 200 metres and made the semi-finals. The quickest boys from a scattering of private schools is not quite the same competition, but does provide an age and background relevant comparison to measure his excellence.

Gout will graduate from year 12 in the coming weeks, but he plainly graduated out of the ranks of schoolboy runners long ago. This was his athletics valedictory ball, a dance to farewell schoolboy running.

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