Gout Gout Suffers Hamstring Tear, Will Not Race Again Until 2027

Gout Gout’s breakout season is over. The 18-year-old Australian sprinter tore his left hamstring in training in Brisbane this week and announced Thursday that he will not race again until 2027, ruling him out of next month’s World U20 Championships in Eugene.

“Unfortunately I suffered an injury to my left hamstring last night at training in Brisbane,” he wrote on Instagram. “I received this morning the MRI report, unfortunately the news is not good and I will not be able to compete in Eugene at the World U20 championships next month.”

He Published The MRI Report Himself

Gout did not soften the diagnosis. He posted the scan findings word for word: a partial thickness tear of the proximal tendon of the long head of the biceps femoris, involving less than 10 percent of the tendon’s cross-sectional area but extending over an 8cm length. That grades as a 3C injury on the British Athletics Muscle Injury Classification, a category that typically requires months of rehabilitation.

“I’m very disappointed but I have no other possibility but to accept the situation,” he wrote. “I understand that this is part of athletics.”

The Season That Made Him A Global Name

The injury cuts short a year in which Gout went from prodigy to headline act. In April he won the Australian open 200m title in 19.67 seconds, a world under-20 record that made him faster than Usain Bolt was at the same age. He added a second straight Australian under-20 100m title along the way.

The step up to senior racing brought harder lessons. He finished sixth in his Diamond League debut in Oslo in June, beaten by Olympic 200m champion Letsile Tebogo. A week later in Ostrava, he ran 14.96 for 150m, an Australian record and a personal best, finishing third in the race where Noah Lyles clocked 14.67, the fastest 150m ever run.

The Title He Wanted Most

Eugene was the target the whole year was built around. Gout had been named in Australia’s team for the 200m and the 4x400m relay, and the 200m carried unfinished business: he took silver at the 2024 World U20 Championships as a 16-year-old, behind South Africa’s Bayanda Walaza.

He had even skipped this month’s Commonwealth Games in Glasgow to focus on the under-20 title, as the Guardian reported. Now his 2026 ends with neither. His next realistic major target is the World Athletics Championships in Beijing in September 2027.

Australian Athletics said in a statement that Gout “has had a phenomenal couple of years, and has a long and exciting athletics career ahead of him,” per the Guardian. “Unfortunately injuries are part of the sport, and it is important that he takes the time to rehabilitate, recover and return to the track to compete when he is ready.”

Gout, for his part, has already set the terms of his comeback: “ensuring I come back in 2027 better and stronger and faster.”