Teenage sprinter beaten by Australia’s fastest man in Melbourne meet
Gut Gut’s speed makes us hasty. He asked us sitting in the backseat of the car, “Aren’t we there yet?” It turns it into children asking:
No, Gut isn’t there yet. Just because he lost Saturday night doesn’t mean he can’t get there; only Lachie Kennedy is much closer.
Gout has nothing to worry about at the Maurie Plant Meets, where he lost for the second straight time to Kennedy on Saturday night.
We shouldn’t worry about whether Gut can live up to expectations. He narrowly lost the race to Australia’s fastest man. He lost this by 0.05 seconds and ran for 20 seconds straight in the rain in Melbourne. When you’re not running very well but you still do it, it’s still a good night.
Whatever Gout does or does not do this year or in the future does not change the undeniable fact that he has run many times faster than any Australian of any age over 200 metres. And he did this for the first time at the age of 16.
Squeezed in between school terms, he went to the world championships and competed in the semi-finals of the world’s best men in front of a packed Tokyo stadium.
But Gout is still in his teens, barely a man. He currently trains and runs mainly against other young people in the hot and humid environment of Queensland. He came to cooler Melbourne, got rained out and came in second place to a man we should spend more time talking about.
If it weren’t for Gout and his extraordinary precocious success, we’d be stuck with Kennedy.
But it doesn’t have to be binary. Kennedy is a star too.
It was a shame that Kennedy beat Gout last year because although he was known to be fast, he didn’t really do anything. He has since broken the top 10 in the 100 meters with a time of 9.98 in Nairobi, becoming the second Australian athlete to do so after Patrick Johnson (9.93 in 2003).
Kennedy is a generational athlete who had the misfortune of coming into the sport in a regular time frame. He wasn’t a schoolboy when he got there. He was young, but not wildly young. His ancestry was familiar old Australia, not new, and potentially culturally transformative. He was never faster than Bolt when he was a kid.
“He understands, Gut is young and his ceiling is unknown. It’s really exciting. But what’s really exciting is the possibility of what these two sprinters can do,” Kennedy’s coach Andrew Iselin said Sunday.
Kennedy’s biggest highlight on Saturday night was running the 100m in 10.03 seconds in mild conditions in Melbourne. Having broken 10 in favorable conditions last year, this was reinforcement that Kennedy is now a 10 straight runner in all conditions. The run in Nairobi won’t be the 22-year-old’s last time running under-10s.
He was so baked after Saturday night’s 100m that he had to lie down and try to sleep with his legs in the air to prevent his team from cramping between races. Iselin came very close to taking him out at 200 metres. But it wasn’t Kennedy. He loves racing.
She is looking to take up the sprint double at nationals in April and the Commonwealth Games later this year. He wants to compete with everything and win everything. He wants every record, whether it’s Gout’s, Johnson’s or Bolt’s.
Kennedy’s focus on the 100m means he rarely runs the 200m when fresh as the 100m almost always comes first.
Iselin said, “His target is the 200 record. If he finds a new opportunity, he has the capacity to run 200 in 19 seconds. He is definitely capable of breaking 20. However, it is rare that he gets this opportunity.”
“He’s getting stronger. Running 10.03 seconds in Melbourne (for the 100 metres), that’s 9.8 seconds in Brisbane conditions. He’s now a 10 straight runner in all conditions. He’s keen to race faster people now.”
“Nothing surprises him. He doesn’t mind the focus on Gut. He loves Gut, he understands why people focus on him because of what he does. But he just loves to race and win.”
Athletics is going through a bright period. Albert Park was sold out on Saturday night. It was largely Gout related but not all.
On one side of the track, in the shade of lights an AFL team would complain about having to train under, world and Olympic champions Nina Kennedy and Nicola Olyslagers sailed over the bars.
Cam Myers and Claudia Hollingsworth, who are as good as any middle-distance runner in the world and may well prove to be as good as any runner Australia has ever produced, both won. Hollingsworth beat the Olympic silver medalist to win the world indoor title. Myers brought down the hammer with 500 meters remaining and won by a margin befitting his dominance of the competition.
Hollingsworth is 20 years old. Myers is 19, Kennedy is just 22, and Gout is 18.
They will all get there, these are the salad days of athletics. There is no need to worry.
Michael Gleeson is an award-winning senior sports writer specializing in AFL and athletics.Connect with: X or email.
