“Nike turned down [Usain] Bolt for less money in 2002. But they would have paid $10 million for him by 2012 ... the chance [was that] he [Bolt was] going to be nothing.

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“For four years they thought they were right, [and] eventually he turned into Usain Bolt.”

Puma famously took a punt on Bolt at the same age Gout is now.

At one stage they considered moving on from the Jamaican, but the all-time great renewed his contract in 2010 and again in 2013, when he had golds at two Olympics in his back pocket and the Rio de Janeiro Games coming up. The new deal was in the range of $US10 million per year.

Only time will tell if the teen sprint star from regional Queensland can replicate Bolt’s remarkable achievements or elevate himself onto the list of Australia’s greatest earners in sport.

Golfer Cameron Smith ($48 million in total earnings) was Australia’s highest-ranked person on the sporting rich list in 2024, according to Forbes. It reported that Smith received $4 million in endorsements, well down on fellow golfers Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods.

But the burning question is: What will Gout’s earning profile be in the countdown to Los Angeles 2028 and the following Olympics in his home town four years later?

Will we ever see anything that even closely resembles the famed Michael Jordan shoe endorsement of 1984, which transformed Nike into a global superpower?

Why adidas?

The deal to put the three stripes on Gout was locked in after adidas satisfied important criteria for him and his representatives. Ensuring that Gout, one of seven children, would not have to move overseas was one of his team’s non-negotiables. However, the chance to travel to Florida for a training block with Olympic 100-metre champion Noah Lyles and his coach Lance Brauman, who has ties with adidas, was another carrot.

The big companies were circling for 18 months, well before the public’s recognition of Gout grew as footage of his stunning performances on the track went viral.

“Australia has just woken up to this kid. But these shoe companies … they’ve known all about him for two years,” said Gout’s manager James Templeton.

One source with knowledge of the situation told this masthead of Nike’s preferences, were they to sign Gout. “Nike were keen, but they wanted him to go train with the guy who trained [Jamaican star] Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce,” the source said.

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In terms of the benefits from an athlete’s perspective, experienced sports business figure Paul Smith said the “gravy” can arrive when wider corporate interest grows. Adidas must have sold Gout and his family “a hell of a good story”, Smith says.

“The good stuff happens when he’s really flying, and that’s when your big corporate brands come in. They’re not performance-based – they’re the credit cards, the banks ... car companies,” said Smith, co-owner and chairman of the NBL’s Sydney Kings.

“That’s where the gravy is. The gravy is not with signing with adidas. There’s only one Michael Jordan deal.”

How it all began

Templeton’s phone started ringing in late 2022 after Gout twice broke the Australian under-16 200m record at the Australian all schools athletics championships in Adelaide.

After that, to borrow from athletics parlance, adidas was a pacesetter.

“They [adidas] always conveyed to me ... not an urgency, but a real desire to get this guy – [A] ‘he’s going to be ours’ [message]. They successfully conveyed that to me all along,” Templeton said.

But Templeton, who has managed other track stars including Kenyan 800m world record holder David Rudisha, had his own message to convey – one of the need for patience with a young man still in his teens.

‘Australia has just woken up to this kid. But these shoe companies … they’ve known all about him for two years.’

Gout Gout’s manager, James Templeton

“I said to them at the time, ‘Look, he’s 14. We don’t need an endorsement contract for a 14-year-old’. And, dare I say it, I was also mindful that the dollars you’re getting for a 14-year-old are insignificant and relatively minor,” Templeton said.

“I knew that if he did the sort of things in the next couple of years that I believe him capable of, the interest will multiply, the interest will skyrocket, and dare I say it … his value.”

A truly international athlete

The deal to land Gout involved input from senior adidas management. It will, according to the anonymous sports administrator, involve the teenager receiving a base payment with performance bonuses based on Olympic and world championship results.

“If they were doing [just] an Australian deal, it would be pretty small – it would be 20 grand, 30 grand [annually], with some bonuses in there and a whole stack of products, but it would be pretty small,” the administrator said.

“They’ll be targeting him in each of the Olympics and world championship cycles.

“Is he going to make an impact in LA in ’28? Or Brisbane? Does he become the face of the Australian team?

“He’ll have a whole lot of incentives based on largely championship times – e.g. if he can break a world record, or an Oceania record, [and/or] Olympic records.”

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Templeton confirmed the high-level adidas involvement in negotiations. “Put it this way, the CEO of adidas AG in Germany, was involved – not directly with me, but I was aware he was involved with Spencer Nel, the guy who did the deal,” Templeton said.

The anonymous sports administrator noted that the adidas calculations would have involved risk mitigation.

“There’s often a reverse correlation based on age. Because of the fact that he’s young … there’s lots of people who have been really good at a young age but haven’t gone on with it,” the source said.

“And that’s part of their risk mitigation – you need enough from your [annual] base [payment] to secure you [the athlete], but what we want to do basically is pay [the bonuses] for [actual] performance.”

The waiting game

Templeton decided that this year’s world junior championships in Peru was close to the ideal time to strike. He kept the companies at bay for a while.

“They were following his progress and, periodically, I’d get a call … saying, ‘Hey, I trust you’re still waiting on until Lima [Peru]. Don’t forget us. Don’t forget we’re interested. We’re interested in having discussions with you – don’t forget that’,” Templeton recalled.

“In other words – don’t come out saying, ‘I’ve just done a deal with someone [else]’.”

There’s also the manager’s art of drumming up business. “The good ones will be absolutely whipping them up in a frenzy,” reflected the anonymous sports administrator.

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The viral factor

Timing can be everything in sport, and also when clinching a deal. Once Templeton pinpointed the world under-20 championships, he got some unplanned assistance. Footage of one of Gout’s runs went viral, even though the video of him running 10.29 seconds for the 100m was hardly fresh.

“The funny thing was it was from a race back in March … but it looked spectacular. It was picked up by LADbible about 10 days before the world juniors started. It went viral. I think it had two million hits,” Templeton said.

“And then it was picked up by Channel Nine news in Brisbane ... and they all seemingly thought the race was [held at the time they saw the footage] … but the race was bloody five months before.”

Former Australian Olympian David Culbert said locking down Gout’s signature in August was good timing.

“The right time to do a deal is the day you sign it,” Culbert said. “Whether he’d be better off signing it this week, rather than last week, is, you know, in the rear-vision mirror. But it provides a lot of certainly for a young athlete.”

The US college path

Even though Gout will soon have a training stint in Florida with Lyles and Brauman, there was no requirement for the teen star to pack his bags and head overseas. Crucially, adidas didn’t push that.

“Some of the other brands were seemingly keen that he move overseas full-time, and sooner rather than later. I said to them, ‘Listen, that’s just not going to happen.’ He’s a straight-A student at a good school … on the outskirts of Brisbane,” Templeton said.

“It was suggested he move to Jamaica in six weeks’ time, and I said, ‘Well, that’s not going to happen. Just forget it’. I wasn’t prepared to be in a situation where I was going to be forced, or we would be forced, to move anywhere.

“We’re intending to stay in Australia. We’ve got a year of school to go. He’s got the world juniors in 2026. He’s 16, for crying out loud. Apart from anything else, he comes from a good family ... he’s a family guy, he’s got his mates.”

If the shoe fits

Culbert agreed it was the best outcome for Gout to stay in Australia.

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“There’s been a lot of [people saying] he should go to US college. No, he shouldn’t, in my view,” Culbert said.

“He doesn’t need to now. The reason why kids go to US colleges is because there’s not the financial support in the Australian system to keep them here. So they go to have a fully subsidised sponsorship – they generally get their clothing, footwear and apparel supplied by the university.”

Culbert noted the importance of a shoe deal for anyone in track and field.

“The shoe contracts are still the one thing in athletics – track and field – that provide the closest thing to a salary for an athlete,” Culbert said.

“The market’s much bigger for distance running shoes for the weekend warrior than they are for sprint spikes and pole vault shoes. That’s the ecosystem.

“It’s a surprise that shoe companies would dive into a young sprinter, and good on them for doing it. They got in before the market took off.”

What’s next?

The market may have taken off, but where’s the ceiling? Templeton confirmed he’s been fielding more enquiries from corporate Australia, and there had been specific interest from another global sporting brand since Gout ran 20.04 seconds for the 200m to break Peter Norman’s record in Brisbane, turbocharging the hype.

Could he soon be the country’s most marketable athlete?

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“Ultimately, the unique aspect about this is that he’s got that much potential internationally as a marketable asset,” said Smith, now chairman of Australian agency Total Sport and Entertainment.

“I talked about him [Gout] with one of my clients, with a brand client of ours. He’s definitely come up on the radar ... we weren’t motivated enough to pick up the phone, but we were interested to watch.”

Bideau spoke of the trail Gout is blazing for Australian athletics, but added a word of caution.

“There’s still 10 guys in the world who will have no problem beating him. We don’t want him running against one of those guys and get[ting] flogged,” he said.

“We’ve got to make sure we do the right things by him, make sure the guy builds his profile, builds his confidence, builds his belief in himself ... [and] doesn’t get put under unnecessary pressure to train too hard and gets injured.

“A lot of things have to go right.”

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