Updated ,first published
Once was an upset. Twice is a pattern.
For a second year in a row, Lachlan Kennedy has upstaged Gout Gout – beating the teenage superstar in the 200 metres at the biggest athletics meet in Australia.
First the rain fell on the track, and then Kennedy rained on Gout’s parade – beating him over 200m in drifting rain at the Maurie Plant Meet. Kennedy ran 20.38s to beat Gout in 20.43s.
Gout praised Kennedy but the national record holder – who last year, wedged between school terms, went to the world championships and made the semi-finals – issued a warning for the national titles in a fortnight: “Props to him, I’ll be back for nationals for sure.”
For Kennedy, the focus on Gout with crowds turning out in extraordinary numbers – 10,000 in a sellout at Albert Park’s Lakeside track – fuelled him, where it might have cowed others. Maybe he was slighted that he was not the focus of expectation, given he had beaten Gout this time last year, which was the last time they met. But if he cared, he didn’t show it. He just liked the show.
“Back-to-back – it doesn’t it doesn’t get much better than that,” Kennedy said.
“I am not listening to the noise much, I just go out there and try to beat whoever is in front of me, and then they are all racing the clock. I love the attention – it’s good. I love winning.”
“The atmosphere is unreal – it is like an extra man. It is an x-factor. Look at the people here – it is great to get this many people out to a track meet in Australia.
“The sky is the limit [for me this year]. To come out here first 100 of the year, [and the] second 200 of the year, [the] second competition, and I am already hitting [those times].
“I am chasing Comm Games gold – I think that’s possible for sure.”
Gout slipped. Just a little, but in a sport decided by fractions of seconds, the small slip at the start on a wet track was critical.
Kennedy lifts something ridiculous in the gym, akin to a small bear, in weird leg weights, and it tells with his explosive starts. He had the race effectively won in the first 40 metres with his good start and Gout’s slippery one. Gout closed on him down the straight after slingshotting off the bend, as is his style, but he had given up too much ground.
“You know he [Gout] is going to come, it’s about not panicking. He will make up ground, but it’s knowing in your head he is going to come and not freak out and stay relaxed,” Kennedy explained.
“It had been dry all night and the second we get on the track, it starts pouring. It made it as cinematic as. I got the happy ending.”
Gout was phlegmatic about the loss – generous in his praise but quietly warning there would be a swift response.
“I come out here to run my race, Lachie got away with the win today, props to him. I’ll be back for nationals for sure,” he said.
“[The weather] always going to be a factor, but at the end of the day you have to go out there and run your race.
“Today he got the W. Next time I will better. He is a Queensland guy [like Gout] – one of my good friends, congratulations to him, but I will be back for sure.”
The pair had not raced head-to-head over 200 metres since last year’s upset win by Kennedy. The only other occasion when they were due to race, at the national titles last year, Kennedy false started and was disqualified.
Gout Gout mania has overshadowed almost everything in Australian Athletics for 18 months, but amid it all Kennedy has continually stepped from the shadows to say ‘Look at me. It’s not all about Gout’.
And he did it again on Saturday night, claiming not only the 100 metres in blistering fashion, running one of the fastest times ever run by an Australian on home soil to clock 10.03 seconds – but beating Gout for the second time head to head.
It was a showcase night of Australia’s remarkable generation of baby athletes.
Claudia Hollingsworth beat an Olympic silver medallist who also just won the world indoor title. Cam Myers ran the fastest time ever in Australia over 1500 metres when he ran three minutes, 30.42 seconds and won by about 50 metres. Kennedy ran a sub-10 last year and just beat Gout, comfortably the fastest Australian of any age over 200m.
Hollingsworth is 20. Myers 19, Kennedy just turned 22 and Gout only blew out 18 candles in December after leaving school.
A week ago, Briton Georgia Hunter-Bell, the 800 Olympic silver medallist from Tokyo, won gold in the 1500m at the world indoors. She had not been beaten in her past five races. She has now.
Australia’s young Olympic semi-finalist Hollingsworth, from bayside Melbourne, held out the middle distance star to win in 4:01.30, a solid 0.22s ahead of Hunter-Bell.
Myers, the Australian wunderkind of men’s middle-distance running, decided with 500 metres to go he would put the foot down. He rapidly opened up a breathtaking gap and never tired. Adam Spencer, who is no plodder, having won a national title and run the fifth-quickest ever time by an Australian, was 50 metres adrift. Myers ran 3.37.51.
“I haven’t been doing too much speed work, but I had the crowd behind me and I felt good, so I went,” Myers said after his race, and his decision to kick 500m out from the line and open up an intimidating break on the field.
It was a race named after John Landy. Myers is running times now that generations ago the great Landy could only dream of. One day, Myers’ name will be on races too.
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Michael Gleeson is an award-winning senior sports writer specialising in AFL and athletics.Connect via X or email.
