The national athletics championships come to a crescendo on Sunday in Perth and a virtuoso display is expected from 17-year-old phenomenon Gout Gout, who will look to break the 20-second mark and better his own national record in his preferred event.
The 2025 Australian championships – dubbed by insiders as Gout-mania – are the first since the teenager’s emergence as a global athletics celebrity, and the afternoon’s 200m heats and final are likely to be the last chance local fans will get to see him chase track records until after he graduates from year 12 this year.
But the sprint star may have to perform without his rival Lachie Kennedy – the victor in Gout’s first senior race at the Maurie Plant meet two weeks ago – who is in doubt after finishing second in the 100m final on Saturday night.
Minutes after losing the title to Rohan Browning in a photo-finish, Kennedy revealed he was feeling the effects of three races in two days. “I’m definitely sore, definitely a little tight, but we’ll see how we pull up tomorrow,” he said. “At this stage, I still want to do the two [hundred], but it’s all about how the body feels after this night’s sleep.”
The King is BACK 👑🔥
— Australian Athletics (@AustralianAths) April 12, 2025
Rohan Browning has delivered an emphatic statement to assert himself back on top in an Australian 100m Championships for the ages, clocking 10.01 (.001) to Lachlan Kennedy’s 10.01 (.006)!
The sprint father is back, you just can’t script the Chemist… pic.twitter.com/tWKHTbwerW
The showdown between Kennedy and Gout has been heavily promoted, after the memorable race in Melbourne where – in front of 10,000 fans – the teenager closed rapidly on his fellow Queenslander but couldn’t quite catch him before the line.
Kennedy said there would not be a formal medical process to check the condition of his body on Sunday morning. Rather, the 21-year-old will make a decision on the “vibe”, while also noting he didn’t feel the need to test himself again over the longer distance.
10 SECONDS FLAT 🤯⚡️
— Australian Athletics (@AustralianAths) April 11, 2025
Lachlan Kennedy explodes to 10.00 (+0.9) in the Men’s 100m Heats, becoming the second fastest Australian of all-time.
With the Men’s 100m Final set for 6:50pm AWST tomorrow night, all eyes are on the Chemist Warehouse Summer Series. 👀#AthleticsNation… pic.twitter.com/vOWvexseoF
“It’ll sort of be like a vibe thing, how the body feels, how the legs feel,” Kennedy said. “If they feel tight, just walking around, I’ll probably call it, but I’ve got nothing to prove in the two [hundred]. It’ll just be like a ‘how I feel’ sort of thing.”
His potential withdrawal leaves Calab Law, last year’s 200m champion and Kennedy’s training partner in Brisbane, as the main competition to Gout. But even if Law can improve his personal best of 20.42s, few believe that anyone other than Gout will win.
The new star of Australian athletics has had two full days off after his performances in the under-20 100m event on Thursday, when he recorded two times of 9.99s – although both were not formally recorded due to excessive tailwinds.
At his preferred distance of 200m he has run quicker than 20 seconds once but that 19.98s in Queensland in March was also with an illegal wind reading. Gout set the national record in December, stopping the clock at 20.04s to beat the previous mark run by Peter Norman, which had stood for 56 years. He then backed it up with a legal 20.05s last month.
On Thursday Gout said the defeat to Kennedy in Melbourne had not prompted him to change his approach to training. “Work on my start, work on running smoothly and work on executing my race plan,” he said of his focus.
About 2,000 fans attended the WA Athletics Stadium on Thursday evening for Gout’s under-20 100m races, and 3,000 were at the arena for the 100m finals on Saturday. But with an improving weather forecast and a predicted top of 26C, ticket sales are already tracking higher for the final day.
The grandstand offers 2,000 seats but the entire venue is ringed by a grassy hill and can hold about 8,000 people. Organisers are expecting in excess of 3,500 fans to stream through in time for Gout’s first appearance in the heats at 12.45pm local time (2.45pm AEST).
The veteran commentator Bruce McAvaney dubbed Saturday night’s action featuring the dramatic 100m finals as “the best couple of hours of nationals I’ve ever seen”. But the championship schedule was designed this year with a Sunday climax in mind.
There is the anticipated high jump showdown between the Olympic medallist Nicola Olyslagers and Eleanor Patterson, the home favourite Kurtis Marschall is competing in the pole vault, plus the 800m finals _ and 1500m champions Jess Hull and Cameron Myers backing up in the 5000m. And then there is Gout, as Australian athletics’ new maestro chases his first senior national title.
