Teen Australian sprinting phenom Gout Gout's highly anticipated appearance at the Stawell Gift next month will be funded by the majority owner of the racehorse that won the 2015 Melbourne Cup.
Wide World of Sports can reveal local man Sandy McGregor, the majority owner of champion racehorse Prince Of Penzance, will pay the 17-year-old sensation an undisclosed sum to run in the prestigious men's 120-metre race in country Victoria on the Easter long weekend (April 19-21).
McGregor's investment in Gout is another indication of the juggernaut commercial commodity the Ipswich-born superstar is rapidly becoming, as was Adidas' commitment of more than $6 million across eight years leading up to the Brisbane 2032 Olympics, per The Age.
Wide World of Sports can also reveal three other top Australian sprinters — Lachlan Kennedy, Josh Azzopardi and Jack Hale — will race over the same distance in the 143rd edition of the Stawell Gift, which event organisers will soon confirm.
As has become tradition at the Stawell Gift, the winners of the men's and women's 120m races will take home $40,000 in prizemoney each.
Kennedy (10.03 seconds), Azzopardi (10.09) and Hale (10.12) all have a faster 100m personal best than Gout's 10.17.
But Gout is the fastest Australian male in history in the 200m, having bettered the 20.06 set by Peter Norman at the Mexico City 1968 Olympics when he clocked 20.04 in Brisbane in December.
Gout Gout at full flight. Getty
Only two men have won the 120m race from scratch — a handicap of 10 metres — in the 142-year history of the Stawell Gift.
If Gout runs off scratch and is able to win on the grass of Central Park, it will mark another incredible moment in the rise of a young sprinter who's drawn comparisons to legendary Jamaican Usain Bolt.
"He's exciting, isn't he?" McGregor told Wide World of Sports.
"He's going to double the crowd. It [the funding of Gout] is an investment in the Stawell Gift. I'm a local, or a former local. You need somebody to do something like this to get the crowd seriously better. It's good for the town, good for the Gift."
Major owner Sandy McGregor and jockey Michelle Payne pictured in the aftermath of Prince Of Penzance's 2015 Melbourne Cup triumph. Getty
McGregor, a managing director at leading Australian logistics service QLS Group, has injected a significant amount of money into local athletics, horse racing, footy and cricket over many years.
He recently spent $500,000 "doing up" Marnoo Cricket Club just north of Stawell.
"It looks like Lord's," McGregor laughed.
Like millions of other Australians, he found himself continually engrossed with the sprinting heroics of Gout last year, so he reached into his pockets.
"I thought he'd be a wonderful attribute [for the Stawell Gift]," McGregor said.
"So we went about trying to get him. James Templeton his manager rang me back, I made him an offer he couldn't refuse, and he took it."
Josh Azzopardi (centre) is one of Australia's top sprinters. Getty Images
Ticket sales have boomed since it was revealed in mid-February that Gout would be racing at the Stawell Gift.
"Before we made the announcement on Gout they [ticket sales] were fairly slow; since then they've exploded out of sight," Murray Emerson, the chairman of Stawell Gift Event Management, told Wide World of Sports.
"It's not sold out yet. Hopefully we'll be able to keep packing them in, but there'll be a position where we'll be required under the regulations not to have any more people in there."
Gout, 16 at the time, clocked 20.04 seconds in December to better the fastest time recorded by Bolt at the same age. Bolt's personal best at 16 was 20.13.
Gout is expected to make his senior Australian debut at September's world championships in Tokyo, where he's aiming to snatch the crown of Olympic and world champion Noah Lyles.
"If he's as good as what they say he's going to be," Emerson said, "he's going to be one of the best ever."