Imma Perfetto
Cosmos science journalist
Gout Gout, the seventeen-year-old sprinting prodigy from Australia, has blitzed yet another milestone on his way to global domination.
Gout clocked in at 19.84 seconds to win the men’s 200m final at the Australian Athletics Championships in Perth this past weekend. The effort would have secured him a new record, but for an illegal wind speed of 2.2m per second.
But astonishingly, according to advanced biomechanical analysis by Flinders University, Gout’s maximum step-length during the event matched that of Usain Bolt during his 100m world record in the 2009 Berlin World Championships.
Movement scientist Dr Dylan Hicks says Gout’s average step length in the final 100m was 2.69m, peaking at an extraordinary 2.86m – equal to the maximum step length recorded by Usain Bolt during his 100m world record in Berlin in 2009, “which appears key to his record performance.”
Gout is shaping up to be a global sprinting’s great, which Hicks attributed to a combination of “unique coordination patterns, biomechanics, technical efficiency” in a recent article in The Conversation.
In addition to a remarkable step length, Hicks says that Gout improved his speed in the first 100m “…from 9.37 m/s (which took him 10.67 seconds) in his 19.98-second race last month to 9.59 m/s (10.43 seconds) in Perth.”
Combined with his ability to maintain speed for the duration of the race, this helped Gout run an (almost) record-breaking time.
But, according to Hicks, it’s Gout’s unique movement signature – how his foot interacts with the ground – that really stands out.
“I believe it is Gout’s unique ability to store and release elastic strain energy via the muscle-achilles tendon unit which provides a greater force amplification effect (between the foot and the ground) — allowing Gout to move faster for longer, with less energy cost,” he says.
“Along with good coaching and hard work, this biomechanical difference appears to set Gout apart from almost anyone else in the world.”
