Jonathan Gault says you have to "wonder a bit" about Gout Gout's 19.67 as the top 5 all PBd by at least .21 - Do you agree?

It happened at the CA state prelim last year to. Guy broke the state record and the entire field had a massive PR. A lot of people claimed it was a timing glitch and some folks had some evidence to back that up. Not sure if that’s what happened here?

Might be just a case of chasing the super talented Gout Gout.

They don’t. They use X.

We see this in distance races. A fast time is run and many PR because they get “pulled along” by the leaders.

The first time I saw Gout I was amazed at how differently he seemed to run. It looked like the track was moving underneath him as he just ate up ground. He just doesn’t seem to be like any other sprinter we’ve seen.

As I was watching this on TV, I immediately noticed the wind flag in the distance—something the highlight clip doesn’t show. In my opinion, when the entire field runs significant PBs, it does seem a bit unlikely and when the time came up I immediately thought wind aided. That said, it was a cool, breezy afternoon in Sydney and made for fantastic viewing.

Go back to your echo chamber, buddy. X has 50% MORE users than before Musk bought it. Only the people on the far left have left.

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Gault Gault is just jealous that he didn't think of it first.

It's the wind on the bend - non-sprinters don't get it.

The wind gauge only measures the wind on the straight. You can have a +4.0 wind around the bend and it's all fine. You want a diagonal tailwind, that is a bit more across the field, then dies a bit in the straight.

It happens -0 you get 200 races where a bunch of people PB, because the wind was right. This was also a nationals champ. Gout ran 19.85 just illegal last year, so not a stretch to improve by that much from 17 to 18yo.

Murphy has had big improvements in every event this year, including 1 second off his 400 time. So with perfect winds, not a stretch to see him improving by 0.4-0.5.

Investigate all you want, but the times stand and are legit.

This is how it works - the measurer waits till the runners hit the straight, then turns it on for say 5 seconds (not the whole straight) and then I assume they average the wind over those 5 seconds.

Rojo and Jonathan, you guys are either stupid or disingenuous (in my opinion, probably both), and your rhetoric of publicly calling into question the validity of performances in this manner has a real impact on people's careers.

Gout Gout just ran 19.67 in a barely legal wind, and you're blatantly ignoring the effects of wind on performance. Let's take a look at two other performances by Gout in the last year while actually paying attention to wind.

1. 20.10 into 1.9 m/s headwind (July, 2025). This would be worth ~19.77 in today's wind.
2. 19.84 with a 2.2 m/s tailwind (April, 2025). This would be worth ~19.87 in today's wind.

Thus, at the age of 17, Gout twice ran performances that correspond to 0.1 and 0.2 seconds off today's performance. He's 18 now, and it's not unreasonable that he would be 0.1-0.2 seconds better at 18 than he was at 17. Anyone who's paid attention to this sport the last few years would have guessed that Gout could go well under 20 with a barely legal tailwind. Either you haven't paid attention to this sport or you're stupid. Maybe both?

Lots of Salty Americans in the comments here, yep Aussies can sprint too. Jog on you wankers

How do you explain the rest of the top seven all running personal bests as well? Most by massive margins? That's not normal.

I'm not ignoring the wind at all. Actually, I suspect the wind is the reason why the times were so fast. I certainly thought Gout was capable of going under 20 with a legal wind. But when you run 19.67, I'm going to raise an eyebrow.

I don't think the clock was wrong or that the track was short. The most likely explanation, as others have speculated, is that they caught a friendly tailwind on the turn (which Gout and Murphy have been unfortunate with in the past) and it wasn't fully reflected by the official +1.7 reading.

I'm not calling for the results to be invalidated. But when the top five in a sprint race all run massive PRs, it's fair to wonder why.

You don't have to wonder about anything. It's all the same thing in this sport now. The prodigies are no different.

We're not publicly calling into question the 'validity' of the performance. He ran the time. There was a wind-gauge. It's his pb.

We're just wondering what explains everyone in the field basically running a huge pb.
Is it repeatable is really the question?

Might the wind have been bigger than recorded, or swirling? Was it just a perfect weather day? Was there something about the race was run (like London 2012 in the 800 where you had Rudisha serve as the perfect rabbit for the field) that made it happen.

It reminds me of Knighton's 19.49 in April of 2022. Huge outlier.

When Knighton ran that (and was younger than Gout Gout is right now), I wrote the following in defense of the time:

One thing that is interesting to note is that taking a big chunk of time off of your 200 PB like Knighton isn’t that unusual. Of the three men history faster than Knighton at 200, all three of them improved by at least 0.42 in a single season. Knighton has improved by 0.35 this year and by .49 last year.

Usain Bolt went from 19.75 to 19.30 at age 21 (0.45 improvement)
Michael Johnson went from 19.79 to 19.32 at age 28 (0.47 improvement)
Yohan Blake went from 19.78 to 19.26 at age 21 (0.52 improvement)

https://www.letsrun.com/news/2022/05/erriyon-knighton-keeps-exceeding-bolt-trayvon-bromell-9-75-penn-drake-relays-erik-sowinski-lifetime-achievement-award-the-week-in-track-and-field/

PS. And I'll admit we at the time said on the podcast that Knighton was the favorite for 200 at Worlds and discussed whether he could break 19.00 for 200.

https://podcast.letsrun.com/ep...

1.7 tailwind is almost perfect.

What was interesting about Stallan was that she came through the preliminary round the evening before

The MAU growth trajectory was built in and his money-losing decision to buy didn’t improve it. Latest MAU YoY is around -15%.

You're very confused and your reading comprehension is poor. The issue wasn't with Gout Gout. The issue was with A LOT of runners having a huge PB in the same race. The chances of that legitimately happening is extremely rare. It's much more likely that something else unusual happened like a timing error, or a mismeasured track, or the race being very windy before and/or after the wind gauge recorded the wind speed.