Usain Bolt has warned Australian schoolboy sprint sensation Gout Gout that translating teenage talent into world and Olympic titles is a tough process.
Gout has earned comparisons with the Jamaican sprinting great after a string of fast times over the past year, with expectation in Australia already building he could win gold on home soil at the 2032 Brisbane Olympics.
Bolt said there was no doubt the 17-year-old, who will make his world championships debut in the 200m in Tokyo next week, had talent, but that was not enough.
"If he continues on this track it's going to be good but it's all about getting everything right. I mean, it's never just easy," he told reporters in Tokyo on Thursday.
"It's always easier when you're younger because I was there, I used to do great things when I was young but the transition to senior from junior is always tougher.
"It's all about if you get the right coach, the right people around you, if you're focused enough, so there will be a lot of factors to determine if he's going to be great, and if he's going to continue on the same trajectory to a championship or Olympics."
Despite also setting age-group records as a youngster, Bolt did not really make an impact on a global scale until he was 22, when he broke the 100m world record twice and won the sprint double at the Beijing Olympics.
He retired as the sport's biggest star in 2017 with eight Olympic and 11 world championships gold medals, his record 9.58 seconds for the dash set in Berlin in 2009 still standing.
The 39-year-old, who added he could have run 9.42 in the carbon-plated "super-spikes" today's sprinters were using, says he will always welcome new talent like Gout breaking through in the sport he loved.
"He's very talented, with the times he's running now and he's really been doing well," he added.
"That's something that you love to see because you want athletes to do well. The more athletes do well, the bigger the sport is, and I'm always a supporter of track and field getting bigger and doing bigger things."
Japan's National Stadium will host the championships, having been fan-less four years ago during the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Olympics.
Regardless of whether Gout is running, the men's 200m final on September 19 is set to be the hottest ticket in town, thanks to Noah Lyles and Kenny Bednarek.
With a message-sending staredown, a two-handed shove that followed and the trash talk after that, Lyles and Bednarek set the stage for what could be the best legit sprint rivalry track has seen in decades.
The mix-up between two of the world's best sprinters after Lyles' 200m win at last month's US championships delivered a ready-made storyline for a sport that struggles to capture the world's imagination the way it did in the Bolt era.
Lyles is the three-time defending world champion at that distance. Bednarek has beaten Lyles in the race at the past two Olympics.
Since that shove, Bednarek has said he and Lyles have discussed things behind closed doors and "everything is sorted."
But this quote from Bednarek, the 26-year-old, two-time Olympic silver medallist, just minutes after the race, has been reheated and rehashed aplenty.
"Unsportsmanlike (expletive) and I don't deal with that," he said.
"It's a respect factor."
with agencies
