Gout Gout clocks 19.67 seconds to set new 200m Australian record \u2013 video<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/gu-island><\/figure>\n
The sport\u2019s current arrangement with Seven has now expired, and negotiations on a new deal \u2013 likely stretching to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics \u2013 have begun. Nine\u2019s decision to show last year\u2019s World Championships in Japan alongside SBS indicates the process will be competitive.<\/p>\n
Yet so too is the Australian sporting marketplace. Athletics was relegated to Seven\u2019s secondary channel on Friday due to the AFL. The lack of football on Seven on Saturday gave enough oxygen for athletics\u2019 best result of the weekend \u2013 almost 1.5m reached for the highest non-news program of the day, with an average audience of 409,000 \u2013 before Gout\u2019s race drew approximately half those numbers in competition with footy on Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n
To Hollingsworth, it\u2019s a sign that interest in athletics is bigger than Gout. \u201cWe\u2019ve taken the opportunity to showcase athletics right in the middle of Gather Round and get some great results.\u201d<\/p>\n
A spot on free-to-air immediately increases the reach of the sport. Hollingsworth says it was a \u201crisk\u201d, requiring the sport to partly meet costs of an elevated production involving more cameras, a drone, and an array of athlete vignettes, as well as tweaking the program to make it more TV-friendly.<\/p>\nBut, he believes, a risk that was worth it. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to establish it as the pinnacle of our sport, the national championships, but also trying to make it a product that people want to watch.\u201d<\/p>\nLachlan Kennedy signs autographs after winning the 100m final at the Australian Athletics Championships.<\/span> Photograph: Stephane Thomas\/ZUMA Press Wire\/Shutterstock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nMuch of the wider interest in the sport right now is tuned to the 20-or-so seconds it takes for Gout to run 200m. Hollingsworth says the \u201chype\u201d around him is \u201cunprecedented\u201d, and exceeds anything he has seen in his four decades in the sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, Cathy [Freeman] is probably the most famous over the last 30, 40 years in terms of interest. The difference between Cathy and Gout is that the hype for Cathy only started from 1994 onwards when she was a little bit older.\u201d<\/p>\nHaving lived the ups and down of the sport over his career, Hollingsworth knows the sport cannot put all its eggs in the basket of an 18-year-old. \u201cOne of the things we\u2019re going to really focus on is, with this depth we have, these great competitions between individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n
He cites the budding rivalry between Jess Hull and Claudia Hollingsworth, who were involved in a controversial incident in their 1500m final on Friday. There is also the consistent excellence of Nicola Olyslagers and Eleanor Patterson, who both won high jump medals in Paris, and Cam Myers\u2019 pursuit of Olli Hoare\u2019s national 1500m record, even as the latter remains at his peak.<\/p>\n
Then there is the emergence of Kennedy, whose rivalry not only with Gout but last year\u2019s national champion Rohan Browning, has electrified the men\u2019s 100m. Kennedy became the first Australian to break 10 seconds over 100m on home soil on Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot every race will go under 10 [seconds], not every Gout run is going to be the top so-and-so in the history of the sport,\u201d Hollingsworth says. \u201cSo you\u2019ve got to give people a reason to come along and watch, and they want to see great racing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The video \u2013 shared millions of times across social media \u2013 is irresistible, showing Gout Gout recording the fastest 200m time by a teenager, ever, on Sunday at the national athletics championships in Sydney. Witness the moment in person, and it was one of Australian sport\u2019s unforgettable days. Yet look at the background behind the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":238800,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6802],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-238799","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-athetics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}