Olympic males’s 200m sprint champion Letsile Tebogo believes Australian teenager Gout Gout can protected a spot in athletics historic previous books if he maintains his stage of motivation.
The two observe stars will appear on the Maurie Plant meet in Melbourne on Saturday, nonetheless just isn’t going to race each other.
Tebogo has chosen to compete inside the 400m whereas Gout will race inside the climax of the evening schedule, the Peter Norman Memorial 200m, which moreover incorporates Australia’s current quickest man Lachie Kennedy and nationwide champion Calab Law.
Gout beat Norman’s Australian report in December which had stood for better than half a century with a time of 20.04s.
Tebogo – who overcame Noah Lyles and Kenny Bednarek inside the Paris 200m remaining with a time of 19.46s – talked about Gout’s mannequin is “top notch” and he’s set to be “the next big thing” for Australia.
“He can be one of the best, he could be in the history books if he continues with the hunger that he has right now, he could go very far,” the 21-year-old talked about.
But he warned that Gout – as a 17-year-old – ought to remember to take points sluggish and shouldn’t on a regular basis compete in opens races just because he can.
“My advice to his coach and people around him would be – even if he can beat these seniors on Saturday – don’t let him stay too much on the seniors, because everybody is watching,” the Botswana athlete talked about.
“If he beats the seniors, what’s going to be next? So after this, back to his age [group] and slowly but surely, he will get there.”
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The meet in Melbourne ensures a highly-anticipated showdown between Gout and Lachie Kennedy, the world indoor silver medallist for 60m who has emerged as Australia’s quickest man with a time of 10.03s over 100m earlier this month.
He talked about he hoped to crack the 10-second barrier this Saturday inside the 100m, and he was assured he would possibly once more up and improve on his personal higher of 21.19s inside the 200m later inside the evening.
“I just want to be able to see where I am compared to someone like Gout, who obviously is pretty much there when it comes to the 19-second barrier,” he talked about.
A packed scheduled moreover incorporates a aggressive John Landy Memorial mens 1500m along with Cameron Myers, Olli Hoare, Peter Bol, Adam Spencer and 15-year-old Kiwi star Sam Ruthe, who turned the first 15-year-old to run a mile in under four minutes just a week ago.
Eleanor Patterson will compete inside the ladies’s extreme bounce per week after her silver at the world indoors, and the women’s 1500m will operate Olympians Linden Hall, Claudia Hollingsworth, and Abbey Caldwell.
Australian Athletics chief govt Simon Hollingsworth talked about he anticipated a near functionality crowd of 10,000 at Lakeside for the sport’s annual showpiece event, given ticket product sales are up nearly 50% on remaining yr.
“We’re in for a really golden decade, and we’re at the start of that, and already the performance is incredible,” he talked about.
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“We had our best Olympics [in Paris] since 1956 and that was a different era, and we’ve built on that. We’ve just finished second in the medal count at the world indoors and we don’t even have an indoor track in Australia.”
He talked about Australia “was batting pretty deep” with its experience and the “phenomenal” Gout had helped introduce athletics to new followers, allowing the sport faucet into further enterprise options.
“The more interest in the sport, the more we can track eyeballs, the more we can attract commercial partners,” he talked about.
“It would have an impact, but I don’t want to pile too much on Gout, because he’s a young, 17-year-old boy who’s still at school. We want to support him to achieve his dreams, that’s the number one goal.”
