{"id":135606,"date":"2025-09-11T16:21:15","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T16:21:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/135606\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T16:21:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T16:21:15","slug":"sprint-great-usain-bolt-says-gout-gout-needs-the-right-support-and-focus-to-succeed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/135606\/","title":{"rendered":"Sprint great Usain Bolt says Gout Gout needs the right support and focus to succeed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Usain Bolt has warned Australian schoolboy sprint sensation Gout Gout that translating teenage talent into world and Olympic titles is a tough process.<\/p>\n

Gout 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.<\/p>\n

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 was not enough.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Former<\/p>\n

Usain Bolt may not have raced since the 2017 world titles, but the World’s Fastest Man still had some advice for Gout Gout ahead of Tokyo. (AP: Eugene Hoshiko)<\/p>\n

He retired as the sport’s biggest star in 2017 with eight Olympic and 11 world championships’ gold medals in his trophy cabinet.<\/p>\n

What Gout can learn from Bolt’s early career<\/a><\/p>\n

Gout Gout’s star is rising even faster than his legs can carry him, and with a world championships debut on the horizon, managing expectations is going to be difficult.<\/p>\n

The 39-year-old said he would always welcome new talent like Gout breaking through in the sport he loved.<\/p>\n

“He’s very talented, with the times he’s running now and he’s really been doing well,” he added.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

Japan’s National Stadium will host the championships, having been fan-less four years ago during the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Olympics.<\/p>\n

Regardless of whether Gout is running, the men’s 200m final on September 19 is set to be the hottest ticket in town, thanks to Noah Lyles and Kenny Bednarek.<\/p>\n

Loading…<\/p>\n

With a message-sending stare down, a two-handed shove that followed and the trash talk after that, Lyles and Bednarek set the stage for what could be the best legit sprint rivalry track has seen in decades.<\/p>\n

The mix-up between two of the world’s best sprinters after Lyles’ 200m win at last month’s US championships delivered a ready-made storyline for a sport that struggles to capture the world’s imagination the way it did in the Bolt era.<\/p>\n

Lyles is the three-time defending world champion at that distance. Bednarek has beaten Lyles in the race at the past two Olympics.<\/p>\n

Since that shove, Bednarek has said he and Lyles have discussed things behind closed doors and “everything is sorted”.<\/p>\n

But this quote from Bednarek, the 26-year-old, two-time Olympic silver medallist, just minutes after the race, has been reheated and rehashed aplenty.<\/p>\n

“Unsportsmanlike (expletive) and I don’t deal with that,” he said.<\/p>\n

AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Usain Bolt has warned Australian schoolboy sprint sensation Gout Gout that translating teenage talent into world and Olympic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[8786,5654,64,63,16741,588,85,91547,93466,81437],"class_list":["post-135606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-advice","tag-athletics","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-gout-gout","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-sprinting","tag-usain-bolt","tag-world-athletics-championships"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}