The brains behind Cathy Freeman's 400-metre triumph at the Sydney 2000 Olympics sees shades of his champion former protégée in Gout Gout and believes the 17-year-old prodigy's potential in the one-lap event is "extreme".
Gout produced the most significant of his record-breaking runs in the 100m and 200m throughout his incredible schoolboy athletics career, capped with an unconventional but wonderful swansong in Brisbane last Friday evening.
In the most notable run of his career as a schoolkid, he hurtled through a 200m in 20.04 seconds at the national school titles in Brisbane last December to break Peter Norman's open-age Australian record set at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.
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No 16-year-old in world history has run 200m so fast.
Over 100m, only two have run quicker at the age of 16 than Gout, who clocked 10.17 seconds.
Speckled among the many meteoric 100m and 200m races Gout ran as a schoolkid were occasional hit-outs over 400m.
Competing for the final time as a schoolboy at the GPS Association of Queensland track and field titles last Friday night, where he ran in the 400m and 4x100m relay but not the 100m or 200m, he lowered his 400m personal best to 46.14 seconds to break the championship record he already owned.
Peter Fortune, who oversaw Freeman's rise to Olympic glory after becoming her coach when she was 18, believes Gout's body composition and the fashion in which he tears home in 200m races are just two factors that suggest he could be set for greatness in the one-lap event.
"I think he has a lot of potential as a 400m runner. He's got a lot of potential with whatever he runs," Fortune told Wide World of Sports.
"He shows that he's not afraid of the 400m. A lot of sprinters don't want to do it because it's a hard event.
"His talent is extreme at the three events [the 100m, 200m and 400m].
"I wouldn't rush into 400s. If I was looking after him I'd be probably trying to maximise 200s through LA [the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics] and then think about the 400m for Brisbane [the 2032 Olympics], unless he's the best in the world in the 200m, in which case you'd probably stick there.
"But he's certainly got what it takes to run 400s."
Gout's body "looks like a 400m body", Fortune said.
"He's lean. He's not a big, muscle, power run; he's a loose, quite long-striding, relaxed runner," he said.
"Now, 400m runners come in all shapes and sizes. I'm not saying you can't be a 400m runner unless you're lean. Michael Johnson [the legendary 200m and 400m American runner] certainly didn't have Gout's build."
In many of Gout's 200m races he's emerged off the bend with no advantage but rocketed home to win emphatically.
In the Ipswich product's first international race as a senior athlete, a 200m at the Czech Republic's Ostrava Golden Spike meet in June, he was in fact trailing Cuba's Reynier Mena with 40 metres to go before powering ahead to win by a metre.
Gout clocked 20.02 to shave two hundredths of a second off his Australian 200m record.
"I think the ability to run on strong that way certainly sets him to be able to make the adaptation to the 400m if he ever wishes to do so," Fortune said.
"The faster he can get at 200m the better he'll do at 400m, so I would maximise over 200m and then that sets him up very well to run a very fast 400m if he ever wants to do so.
"The speed drop-off is quite a lot late in the race [in the 400m]. You're at your fastest probably at the 130-150m mark and from there on, really, you're slowing down. With most athletes the first 200m is quicker than the second 200m.
"And that's where having really top speed is very handy, because you can go through the first 200m comfortably on the pace; if you're not so fast, you're running your first 200m closer to your maximum which will possibly mean more fatigue later in the race."
Gout faded late in last Friday's run. Brisbane Grammar's Seth Kennedy closed on his Ipswich Grammar rival in the final 50 metres and finished only 0.5 of a second behind.
But while Kennedy is a 200m/400m runner, Gout is a 100m/200m runner who does the occasional 400m to test his speed endurance.
Freeman was originally a 100m/200m runner, then switched to doubling in the 200m and 400m.
Fortune sees shades of Freeman's running action in Gout's.
"They're not what you call power runners; they're light on their feet and fairly long-striding," he said.
"Gout's probably a bit more explosive than Catherine was.
"They're both sort of long-legged and run with long, flowing strides, so I do see similarities, yes.
"I think one of the plusses Gout has got is the ability to relax with a huge cadence and a big stride, and I think that's a lot of his strength, whereas running power is not necessarily his game at the moment."
Fortune also said that the way in which Gout attacked the 400m last Friday suggested he was not only talented, but bold.
"I don't know what the plan was but the fact that he went out and had a crack and set himself up to be vulnerable was very courageous of him," he said, "and it indicates he's certainly got what it takes mentally to run 400s, as well as what it takes physically to run 400s."
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