Australia’s 17-year-old sprinting sensation Gout Gout has blitzed yet another milestone on his way to global domination.

Gout clocked in at 19.84 seconds to win the men’s 200-metre final at the Australian Athletics Championships in Perth last weekend.

The effort would have secured the Queensland teenager a record, but for an illegal wind speed of 2.2 metres a second.

Even more astonishingly, advanced biomechanical analysis by Flinders University has found that Gout’s maximum step length during the race matched that of Usain Bolt during his 100-metre world record in the 2009 Berlin World Championships.

Movement scientist Dr Dylan Hicks said Gout’s average step length in the final 100 metres was 2.69 metres, peaking at an extraordinary 2.86 metres – equal to Bolt’s maximum step length during his 100-metre world record in Berlin in 2009, “which appears key to his record performance”.

The 17-year-old created worldwide headlines last week after twice running the 100-metre sprint in Perth in 9.99 seconds. Neither counted as an official time given the strong tailwind.

On Sunday, Gout sent WA Athletics Stadium into overdrive when he ran the 200m in 19.84 seconds. This time the tailwind was only marginally over the legal limit.

The speed means the young athlete’s quest to officially go sub-10 in the 100 metres and sub-20 in the 200 metres continues.

“These are the steps you take to the top, and the steps I have to take to potentially become a world champion or an Olympic champion,” he said.

“If I can get these little steps, focus on the little things, I think I can take it far.”

For his part, Bolt has also noticed the rising Australia.

“He looks like young me,” he wrote on Instagram following a video of a Gout performance back in December.

Gout is indeed shaping up as a global sprinting great, which Hicks has attributed to a combination of “unique coordination patterns, biomechanics, technical efficiency”.

In addition to Gout’s remarkable step length, Hicks said the young star’s speed had improved in the first 100 metres “from 9.37 metres a second (which took him 10.67 seconds) in his 19.98-second [200-metre race at the Queensland Athletics Championships] last month to 9.59 metres a second (10.43 seconds) in Perth.”

Combined with his ability to maintain speed throughout the race, this helped Gout run his (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 said.

“Along with good coaching and hard work, this biomechanical difference appears to set Gout apart from almost anyone else in the world.”

Gout will have his next race at the Stawell Gift meet in western Victoria over the Easter long weekend.

This article first appeared in Cosmos. Read the original here