If the statistics hold – studies say the average Olympic sprinting medallist is between 26 and 27 – then we may not even see Gout reach his peak this decade. The Brisbane Olympics in 2032 could possibly be a smidge too soon as well, when Gout will be 24.

Norman? He was 26 when he ran home strongly to win silver in 20.06s at altitude in the 1968 Olympics. He had never run faster than 20.5s in winning three national 200m titles in the preceding years.

There are outliers for every average, of course, and to see the world-record performances of an athlete who shook the world well before his 26th birthday, you only need to look at the superstar Gout is being compared to.

Bolt won a world junior 200m title at 15 and ran 20.13s in 2004 as a 16-year-old, and the side-by-side footage of himself and Gout as gangly teenagers is uncannily similar. Even Bolt commented this week, after watching Gout’s run at the Australian All-Schools: “He looks like young me”.

Bolt obviously went on to become the fastest man in history, with world record times in the 100m (9.58s) and 200m (19.19s), and claimed the golden Olympic double in the 100m and 200m at three consecutive Games (2008-12-16). He turned 22 at the Beijing Games in 2008.

But even Bolt only pulled it all together suddenly that year, after several years of injury, disappointment and relative failure. Between 2004, when he began running professionally, and 2007, the Bolt story was far more about unfulfilled potential than the unstoppable rise of a superstar. He finished second in the 200m world championships in 2007.

“When I started out I didn’t understand the concept of ‘being great’ because I was really talented. I didn’t have to work as hard as it was just talent, as I was winning and winning and winning,” Bolt told the High Performance Podcast last month.

“When I got to the professional level and I felt like it was going to be easy, I would go to meets and I would lose, and I thought ‘this is strange, this is new’. It is something that took me a while to understand.

“When I started working with coach [Glen] Mills and he sat me down and explained and said ‘listen, everybody who is a professional has talent, so it’s who works the hardest on their talent that will be the best’. And that’s when I understood that you can’t get to the top with just talent alone.”

Few people remember Bolt’s first taste of the Olympics was in Athens in 2004, when the 18-year-old, carrying an injury, came fifth in his 200m heat and was run out.

He joined Mills’ training group the next year, and the famed Jamaican coach set about rebuilding Bolt.

“When I started working with him, one of the things that stood out like a sore thumb was his poor mechanics. He was continually having hamstring problems,” Mills said in a 2010 interview.

Mills determined Bolt was running behind his centre of balance, and set about doing two years of drills and core strengthening to fix his technique, to maintain top-end velocity.

“In Beijing he showed a mastery of the technique that we had been working on, but the transformation took two years,” Mills said.

Bolt has also spoken about his work ethic not being good enough until he decided to fully commit his life to training in 2007, and spectacular results followed. Having never run 100m competitively until 2007, he then broke the world record twice in 2008 and then set the current mark of 9.58s in Berlin in 2009. He ran his world record in the 200m (19.19) at the same 2009 World Championships.

Bolt went onto to defend his Olympic crowns twice more but, interestingly, had run his fastest times by the age of 23.

How will Gout’s progression track, comparatively, to Bolt? Given the apparent similarities of the pair’s styles – slow out the blocks but outstanding in the run home with high knees and long strides – will Gout also take time to develop a technique capable of breaking world records?

Time will tell.

But Murphy, who coaches Australia’s current top sprinter Rohan Browning, isn’t necessarily convinced about the comparisons between Bolt and Gout anyway.

“He is a bit different from Bolt, in the sense Bolt was 6ft5 [195cm] and Gout is 180cm. So we are talking very different athletes. But people who are six-foot run 9.8s and 19.50s – Michael Johnson comes to mind,” Murphy said.

“He a fantastic kid, he is very exciting. He is what I would call a fascial athlete [having a layer of strong, stretchy tissue over muscles]. There are two types of athlete, neuromuscular and fascial, and Gout Gout fits into the fascial all day every day. He is very elastic.

“His technical mechanics, obviously everyone can always improve. There are probably elements that he can improve the efficiency there. But overall I think Di has done an incredible job. She has had him for a number of years now and it’s really impressive to see.”

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The fact Gout has already broken the senior men’s 200m record points to his potential to be a Bolt-style outlier, who could also reach his peak speeds before the average and in time for the 2032 Olympics.

Before then, Murphy hopes Gout’s emergence will not only attract new crowds to the sport but inspire and challenge all Australian sprinters to start clocking world-class times.

“I am super excited. When I saw it I was blown away, the same as everyone – OMG – how has this happened?” Murphy said.

“But I think it is really good for the sport and it is super exciting, and hopefully it motivates all other Australian sprinters, like your Rohans [Browning] and others, they can go ‘OK come on, let’s get better now’.

“Hopefully we will start to see guys pop out and starting running 9.9s, and ... we have a sport that people in Australia will want to come and watch. Like ‘It’s the Sydney Track Classic and Rohan Browning is taking on Gout Gout – we have to get out and see that’. That’s very exciting for the sport.”

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