'Outrageous': Why insane Gout Gout run has gone viral 15 months later

If you were trawling through social media over the weekend and stumbled across a clip of Gout Gout at his barely believable best, you may have thought the video was of a run from the weekend. And understandably so. Indeed, if you took a look at the vision and had an inkling it was from many months prior, you were doubtless in the minority.

The video, which was posted to X in the wee hours of Saturday morning Australian time and went viral from there, was of a run from 15 months prior.

It was of a 16-year-old Gout demolishing a field in the heats of the under-18 men's 100 metres at the Australian all schools championships in Brisbane on December 6, 2024.

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Still three weeks shy of his 17th birthday, he stopped the clock at 10.04 seconds.

He did have a blustery wind blowing him along — a wind measuring +3.4 metres per second, to be precise — but he had to have the leg speed to go that fast, and his chasers were in another postcode, and he was only sixteen.

He strutted back in to Queensland Sport and Athletics Centre the next day and left those in the stands even more astonished than he had in his 100m heat.

On December 7, 2024, he tore through the final of the under-18 men's 200m in just 20.04 seconds.

The run was significant for two reasons.

One; because he shattered the iconic open-age Australian record set by Peter Norman way back in 1968 at the Mexico City Olympic Games.

And two; because no other 16-year-old in world history had run a 200m so fast. Not even Usain Bolt. Or Yohan Blake. Or Michael Johnson. Or Carl Lewis. Or Noah Lyles.

Gout's record-breaking 200m run at the national school titles also went viral, as many clips of the teen sensation have.

The video that went viral on the weekend was posted by a user of X with the handle @Bigqadi. Only he knows why he posted it 15 months later, but he pushed the clip out there and like gasoline it caught fire.

"Absolutely outrageous from Gout Gout," he wrote. "10.04 at the age of 16. Speechless."

The X account Barstool Sports, an American social media page boasting 6.9 million followers, was swept up by the craze and proceeded to drop its own post.

"There's a 16-year-old named Gout Gout," the post read.

"He may be the fastest person alive."

As of midday Monday Australian time, the video posted by @Bigqadi has racked up 25.5 million views. It's also been liked 99,000 times, shared 12,000 times, and bookmarked 7200 times.

And 1700 comments have lobbed underneath. Among those who've commented are Joe Darko, the global head of developer relations at social media giant Snapchat.

"If this guys learns how to ... start aggressively, he will break the Olympic record for the men's 100m. [It] is 9.63 seconds," Darko wrote. "He has a good finish, especially last 40 meters [sic] but needs to start stronger!"

Indeed, if he continues on the trajectory he's on, he may well break the Olympic 100m record — the 9.63 run by Bolt at the London 2012 Games — and the world record: the 9.58 the Jamaican legend clocked at the 2009 world championships in Berlin.

But that's big-picture stuff, as is winning Olympic gold medals, which the Ipswich-born superstar wants to do in Brisbane, just a short car ride from his home town, in 2032.

For now, his team is shielding him from the spotlight and letting him ease into life as a full-time sprinting professional. After all, he only finished year 12 at Ipswich Grammar School last year.

Next up for the $6 million Adidas-sponsored prodigy is a 200m at the Maurie Plant Meet in Melbourne on Saturday night, where he'll take on fellow Queenslander Lachie Kennedy and Ireland’s Benjamin Richardson, a sub-20-second guy.

There's every chance Gout's looming run in Melbourne will also go viral, and maybe even 15 months on.