by The drop gout was held near its blocks, and 10,000 fans – noisy a few moments earlier – were silent. The act was a collective demonstration of respect, recognition that they were in the presence of grandeur. “It’s so calm,” whispered.
They didn’t have to be said, this mass that had launched the Stadium Lakeside on Saturday, how lucky they were. According to a noisy evening of convincing athletics, the time before the 200m race increased at night in something more important. “The silence was noisy,” said Gout thereafter.
In relation: Lachie Kennedy Upstages Gout Gout on the historic night of Australian athletics
This calm suited an Olympic final. Sanneau and committed, it was extended, from 10 seconds to 20, then around a minute. “It’s so stressful,” whispered another spectator.
You had to feel for the triple men’s sweaters, taken in the middle. Just before the headliners of the evening took place there, there were, just a few steps, starting their slowdowns. “You could hear a pin fall, and even the triple jump, you hear the steps,” said Gout.
The family and friends near the pit offered a handful of applause for two or three which dared to break the fate. But in the rest of the stadium, the only sound was the scan to unlock the phones. If they had not already raised in the air, silence only encouraged more to reach their pockets. Gout described the moment as “definitively surreal”.
The ruin of the word is one of the great transvestites of sport. Most athletes turn to him in a mixture of self-depreciation and an eagerness to please in response to the traditional rear pages construction block, the question: “How does it feel?” But the use of taste was one of those rare occasions when the term was perhaps appropriate.
Surreal has a character of the bizarre, fantasy, absurd. This 17 -year -old run 200m faster than any other Australian before him, with an approach like a high speed of a bicycle. He promises to exhaust the hopes of a nation for a home of the Olympic Games in seven years and to anchor the faith of the same nation in multiculturalism. It is Adidas’ golden ticket and has already reported millions of dollars in income for Athletics Australia. However, the third of the seven children of the South Sudanese migrants Bona and Monica spent this week to take her secondary exams. This same boy on Saturday left an entire stage to delight.
Three hundred words in this room and it may be useful to mention the man who has really won the race. Lachie “Not Lachlan because it makes me think that my mother is angry with me” Kennedy is the bio-mechanical opposite of gout. Fast blocks, the 21-year-old works like the T-1000. But while John Connor’s Nemeis was sent back over time, Kennedy rushes into the history of athletics.
Four weeks ago, he became the fastest third Australian for 100 m. Last week, he won the country’s first world medal in the country, money in China. Saturday’s race made him the fifth the fastest Australian by 200m. Its 20.26 second is only 0.22 seconds on the national Goust record from December, and was made during a meeting marked by complaints of athletes of attractions, cold and slow.
Kennedy said last week in his confident and jovial way that Gout had brought new fans to athletics, to the advantages of all athletes. But there is no doubt that without his colleague Queenslander, there would be much more ink written on the former rugby winger.
He smiled when he said he was sorry to spoil the night of some participants who came to see the teenager to establish another record, “but what a big race, you cannot be upset to look at something like that”.
Few could contest with him. Three hours of athletics, featuring many medalists from the Record campaigns of Australia at the Paris Olympic Games and the World Championships in Peru under 20, resulted in the last meter of the 200m. The final event of the calendar was rightly titled the commemorative race Peter Norman, since the Norman national record was suffered from Australian records after more than five decades by drop in December.
As the finish line approaches, the Usain Bolt man’s pistons describe as a “young me” – or “g -man”, while Kennedy nicknamed him on Saturday – seemed to be ready to run the leader. But Marvel de Skynet has extended its ample neck over the line to guarantee its most prominent victory.
The drama was broadcast live on the main channel of the seven channel in Sydney and Melbourne in even more evidence of the high stature of athletics, and the enthusiasm of those who there highlighted the great potential of sport.
Then, Gout went to take photos with the crowd along the fence, which had increased in size and now had four depth phones, a lot singing “drop, drop, drop”. Even the cool coach of the teenager, Di Sheppard, admitted that the attention on Saturday was a surprise. “I was a little, almost – not exceeded – but I surprised a little,” she said.
At the end of its suffocating media melee, the drop has been asked if it always feels normal. “Life is never normal,” he replied. “You have the ups and downs, you have halos, you have the rocks, you have the sand, you have fire. So it’s certainly not normal, but that’s something I can get used to and something I can face.”
