Former Australian sprinting cult hero John Steffensen erred away from predicting whether or not Gout Gout would be capable to conquer the Stawell Present from scratch — a feat that is solely been achieved within the marquee males’s race twice in 142 years.
However the Commonwealth Video games gold medallist hailed the Stawell Present’s luring of a teen sensation who had “transcended the game” of athletics and stated he was set to make for “bloody good viewing” on Easter Monday.
It was revealed on Wednesday that Gout, the 17-year-old sprinting sensation from Queensland, had agreed to run the enduring 120-metre race within the Victorian city of Stawell.
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And within the possible occasion of Gout being dealt essentially the most troublesome handicap attainable — a handicap of 10 metres — the most popular property in Australian athletics can be making an attempt to grow to be the primary man since 2005 to win from scratch, 20 years on from Olympian Josh Ross’ heroic second on the grass of Central Park.
The winners of the boys’s and girls’s 120m races will each pocket $40,000 at an occasion that is billed as “Australia’s richest footrace”.
Steffensen contested the well-known occasion in 2011, 2012 and 2014. His London Olympic Video games marketing campaign was derailed by a hamstring tear suffered within the remaining of the 2012 Stawell Present.
Australian sprinting prodigy Gout Gout. Getty
“He is positively transcended the game so far as athletics, so to have anyone who’s on the tip of individuals’s tongues with regards to sport … I feel it is nice for the VAL [Victorian Athletic League] and the organisers of the Stawell Present … He’s the new identify in athletics in the intervening time,” Steffensen instructed Huge World of Sports activities.
“I really like the Stawell Present. I feel it is one of many premium athletics meets in the entire world. Its historical past and what it stands for is frickin’ wonderful, the way it’s run on grass, the custom, a dwell occasion for spectators … It is a part of Australian historical past, and to have Gout part of that I feel is implausible for everyone concerned.”
4 years earlier than Cathy Freeman’s golden second in Sydney she produced a panoramic win within the 400m in Stawell.
Kim Collins, the 2003 world 100m champion, and former 100m world document holder Asafa Powell are among the many different greats to have run on the Stawell Present.
John Steffensen (1) racing the 550m on the 2014 Stawell Present. Getty
“It is laborious to say how individuals’s star energy compares and what they’ll generate so far as curiosity,” Steffensen stated.
“However is it factor Gout is coming? Hell yeah, it is an important factor he is coming … He is the in-form athlete and the speak of the city with regards to sprinting in the intervening time in Australia, and even worldwide. Everybody’s speaking about this younger child working quick … Each time he runs he will generate consideration, and if that focus goes to be centered on the Stawell Present, how nice is that for the Stawell Present?”
Requested if Gout may win from scratch, Steffensen stated he’d need to know who’s working and off which marks earlier than making a name, however the considered Gout making an attempt to run excessive of the sphere had him raving.
Gout Gout. Getty
“As a result of it is Gout and the way in which he runs — he is obtained such an excessive working gait, he runs so massive and tall — and his greatest distance is the 200m, which fits him for the 120m, it is constructed for him late,” Steffensen stated.
“The final 20 [metres] is the place the race is sorted out, when all of the handicaps come into play, and to see a scratch marker mowing all of them down is bloody good viewing.”
Gout will subsequent race on the Queensland championships, to be held in Brisbane from March 13-16, the place he’ll contest the 100m and 200m.
The Adidas-sponsored prodigy will then compete within the 200m at Melbourne’s Maurie Plant Meet on March 29.
On the Australian championships in Perth in April, every week earlier than the Stawell Present, Gout will compete within the open division within the 200m and the under-20 area within the 100m.
Within the Ipswich product’s most up-to-date viral run, he broke the Australian 200m document set by the enduring Peter Norman on the Mexico Metropolis 1968 Olympics.
Gout, 16 on the time, clocked 20.04 seconds in Brisbane in December to raised the quickest time recorded by Usain Bolt on the identical age. Bolt’s private greatest at 16 was 20.13.
In January, Gout spent two weeks in Clermont, Florida on a coaching camp with the squad of American megastar Noah Lyles, the reigning 100m Olympic champion.
