Former world champion sprinter Fred Kerley has claimed Gout Gout ‘can’t handle the pressure’ and will get ‘destroyed’ when he competes against the world’s best as he called on the Aussie to race him at the drug-fuelled Enhanced Games.
Kerley, who medalled in the 100m at the Tokyo and Paris Olympics, is racing at the Games, which encourage competitors to take performance-enhancing drugs like steroids as they compete across a range of sports.
The American star is running drug-free at the event in America, and encouraged Gout to do the same.
Kerley’s comments were a double-edged sword for Gout as he described the Queenslander as the ‘future’ of sprinting while also casting doubt on his ability to handle the sport’s biggest stages.
‘I have seen him [Gout]. He’s the next up. He’s the future of the sport and with the next generation,’ Kerley said.
‘It’s all about what he believes in. Anybody can compete [at the Enhanced Games]. If you [Gout] want to come, come. You’ll still get destroyed.
Olympic medallist and 2022 world 100m champion Fred Kerley (pictured) has dared Gout Gout to run against him at the Enhanced Games, which encourage the use of performance-enhancing drugs
Kerley said Gout (pictured) would get ‘destroyed’ against the world’s best runners and cast doubt on the Aussie’s ability to deal with pressure
‘He’s a kid. There would be so much in his head. I don’t think he can handle the pressure.’
The 31-year-old – who won the 100m title at the 2022 World Championships in Oregon – also said Gout is a ‘nice, fantastic athlete’ after the Aussie’s stellar form of late.
Last month, Gout ran an astonishing 19.67 seconds in the 200m final at the Australian Championships in Sydney.
That gave him the under-20 world record for the event and smashed his previous personal best of 20.02 seconds.
While Gout currently has no plans to race in the Enhanced Games, another big Aussie name is set to attempt to earn a fortune by competing in swimming during the event on Monday, Australian time.
The financial lure is substantial for James Magnussen, a two-time Olympian and dual 100m freestyle world champion who retired from swimming in 2018, until the arrival of the Enhanced Games.
Magnussen will swim the 50m freestyle and 100m freestyle in Vegas with $US250,000 ($A358,000) prizemoney for race winners; and a $US1million ($A1.4million) bonus for breaking the 100m freestyle world record.
That bonus is also on offer to anyone breaking the 100m sprint world record at the inaugural Games, a multi-sport event with no drug testing founded by an Australian.
Despite his criticism, Kerley (pictured after a race in 2024) believes the Aussie teenager is ‘the future of the sport’
Gout turned heads around the world when he clocked a sizzling 19.67 seconds in the 200m at the Australian Athletics Championships in April
The Melbourne-born entrepreneur, Aron D’Souza, has since left the company that became The Enhanced Group.
On May 8, the company officially launched on the New York Stock Exchange with a reported $1.2billion enterprise valuation.
‘I am kind of a zero-one kind of guy. I like being in early variations of the business, that is when it’s exciting,’ D’Souza said.
‘In the end, I am not an event organiser. I am a philosopher.
‘And I feel very happy about where not just the business, but the movement, is.’
In D’Souza’s vision, Enhanced Games is the vehicle to build ‘super humanity – humans 2.0’; to stop a stigma around using medically supervised enhancements in society.
And to make a lot of money doing so: the performance-enhancing drugs being taken by Magnussen and other athletes are being marketed and sold by The Enhanced Group.
