After an excellent indoor season and an eventful Australian Championships, the coming months are full of promise. Katharine Merry is ready to tuck into what comes next.

I’ll happily admit that, like most athletics fans, I’m pretty greedy. The World Indoor Championships served us up quite a feast in March but I’m already hungry for more, so I’m truly thankful that the outdoor season is about to get fully up and running. 

There’s a different feel about this summer ahead. For some, there are big, obvious targets in the form of the Commonwealth Games and the European Championships but there is also a sense of freedom for a number of the big names who can experiment a bit more or chase goals that might otherwise have been out of the question with a world title or Olympic ambitions on the line. 

The sport is in a good place at the moment but it’s also in a state of flux and we seem to have this really nice blend of established, well-known record-breakers who are compelling to watch along with a clutch of youngsters coming through – and that’s really, really good. 

One of the most prominent of those emerging talents has wasted little time in hitting the headlines. The Australian Championships have proved to be packed full of incident, but the world is watching Gout Gout’s every move so for him to achieve his ambition of breaking the 20-second barrier for 200m with a legal wind – producing a world under-20 record of 19.67 in the process – has made waves. 

Some people were quick, and absolutely right, to question it by pointing to the fact that a number of other athletes in that same race also recorded personal bests – a trend like that is always going to arouse suspicion – but it’s not like we didn’t know Gout could run really fast. We’ve been aware of what an exceptional talent he is for a couple of years now. 

I also think this could be a rare case of the completely perfect conditions coming together for a 200m. Some people either don’t understand, or perhaps don’t want to acknowledge, the way that the wind can work in the 200m sometimes. It doesn’t happen often, but if the breeze is blowing at just the right diagonal angle, it aids you on the second half of the bend and gives you a boost down the straight. Could this be exactly what has happened here?

As we know, there's only one wind gauge, on the home straight, and it measured at 1.7 – nigh on perfect, legal conditions. Apparently it’s a very new track at that stadium in Sydney, which also helps, as does the spike technology. 

I'm not questioning the times because I do think Gout is capable of doing that, but that element of controversy around the performance actually helps because it just increases the interest in what he does next and how he responds. Everyone is now wondering if he (and the others who smashed their bests in the race!) can back it up – and that’s a great position for the sport to be in. The organisers of the Golden Spike meeting in Ostrava must be rubbing their hands, given that the 18-year-old will be facing Noah Lyles over 150m there in June and he’ll also face the 200m Olympic champion Letsile Tebogo in Oslo. 

Of course, there can’t be mention of Gout without there also being mention of Usain Bolt in the same sentence and it’s an amazing statistic that the Australian is faster than the Jamaican was at the same age, but times have changed. It’s also only human nature to wonder if that fabled world 200m record of 19.19 might soon be under threat. 

I think having that level of expectation around you must be a heavy weight to carry, but I’m not totally convinced that Gout will be buckling under the strain or giving it too much thought. This isn’t on the same scale but I remember that, when I broke through as a teenager, I was quickly labelled as being “the next Kathy Cook”. I embraced it. You have to take it as a compliment. I don't remember it being something that I worried about. I think it might actually have more of an effect on the team around you and those closest to you.

When you’re that young you genuinely think you've got all the time in the world so you don’t really internalise it as a kind of pressure. You don't see past the end of your nose. You think: “I've got another 15 years in this sport”. It's very exciting. You'd rather be talked about as the next big thing than not at all.

What else would I like to see more of in the summer ahead? That wish list doesn’t really change too much from year to year. I want to see more competitions and I want them to be more accessible. I want them to be easy to find, easy to follow and easy to watch. 

I want to see good head to head competitions and we’re going to get them. The London Diamond League meeting already looks like it’s going to be unmissable, for example, and I gather the ticket sales are beyond 40,000 already.  

I would also like to see a little more empathy for the athletes. One thing that does worry me about Gout is the number of racist comments that are thrown at him whenever he does something special, or the claims that, because his parents are from South Sudan, then he isn’t Australian. 

Can we please just try to enjoy what these amazing individuals are doing? Enjoy the characters, enjoy the new names coming through. Until I am proven otherwise I like to enjoy what I see as much as possible. And I’d love the wider public to realise that nobody wants an athlete to perform and do well more than the athlete themselves. I think people forget that sometimes, if something doesn't go to plan, or someone's got injured again, it hasn’t happened on purpose. No-one plans to be injured and don’t forget these people are humans, too. 

What would I like to see less of? That one’s easy. Could West Ham please stop digging their heels in and making life difficult for London’s 2029 World Championships bid by refusing to temporarily move away from the stadium for the event? I think we’re going to be reminded with the Diamond League meeting in July just how incredible it has the potential to be so I can’t believe that a solution isn’t going to be possible before the bid is submitted.

Let’s have more good, healthy debate and celebrate the good stuff, because I think there will be a lot to celebrate in the summer.