Usain Bolt’s advises Gout Gout to keep focused on track and field
Sprinting legend Usain Bolt has urged rising Australian star Gout Gout not to forget athletics and find a good support network that will allow him to focus on his career as attention and distractions intensify.
Gout, 18, defended his 200-meter title with 19.67 seconds at the Australian Athletics Championships on April 12, surpassing US sprinter Erriyon Knighton’s under-20 world record (19.69) and surpassing Bolt’s time of 19.93 from 2004 (the Jamaican’s fastest time as a youth).
Gout, who also won the 100 meters national championship under the age of 20, fell below 20 seconds with a time of 19.84 in the championship last season with the help of the wind, and had previously achieved the fastest time of a 16-year-old athlete over 200 meters by running 20.04 in 2024.
Jamaican eight-time Olympic champion Bolt, who previously gave advice to Gout, whom he said “looks like a young me”, told CNN: “At that young age, because I was there, you start tossing around and then you forget about athletics.
“Hopefully he has the right people to guide him and keep him focused on athletics because the rest of the stuff will always be there.”
“But if you make mistakes in athletics, then everything goes away.”
Gout will make his Diamond League debut in the 200 meters in Oslo on June 10, but has stated that he will skip the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and focus on the Under-20 World Championships in Oregon in August.
