AsGout Gouthas bounded up the steps towards the summit of Australian athletics, never far away has been his coach Di Sheppard. Their journeys, however, could not be more different.
The teenager has arrived in the blink of an eye. The son of South Sudanese immigrants, the Ipswich Grammar student is already a global track star andnational 200m champion at 17, and has run faster than Usain Bolt at the same age.
Sheppard’s struggles – as an athletics outsider, through adversity, all the while carrying trauma – have defined much of her 60 years. “I sit there and say to ‘the big man’, it’s nice to now get something good,” she says. “I think I’ve paid my dues with the stuff that you have to deal with in life.”
It has been about four years since Sheppard first started working with Gout, the length of time Sheppard believes it takes to really get to know someone. She sees that his talents go well beyond his biomechanics, commitment to training or genetic gifts.
She has recognised in Gout the “emotional intelligence” of someone older, and an ability to understand the variables, the challenges of the everyday. Overcoming them and committing to a longer goal, Sheppard sees, is part of his constitution. “You know yourself how hard that is as an adult, let alone as a kid,” she says. “He has a massive ability to be able to do that.”
Those qualities have already taken Gout far. Withelite times in both the 100m and 200m, few other Australian sprinters have achieved even close to what he already has. And with global fame and a seven-year runway to the Brisbane 2032 Olympics – where the local is on track to be the main attraction – Sheppard says she has tried to do what she can to prepare him for what is to come.
“I’ve been telling him for a couple of years that when we get to a set point, your social life will be pretty much non-existent, in the sense you just can’t go out where you want,” she says. “He’s at that point pretty much now, which is kind of tough when you think he’s still at school.”
While Gout smiles widely and plays up for the cameras, Sheppard has a reputation for a frosty exterior. There’s a large difference between the pair in height, in age, in background. Gout glides around the track, while Sheppard wears a brace on her right knee and walks with a limp.
“I got hit by a car when I was on the back of a motorbike, I’ve had 11 operations on my leg,” Sheppard says. “I have golden staph in my leg, which means I can’t get my leg operated on at any random time, because there’s a good chance the infection will flare up again once the knee’s totally open.”
Sheppard prefers to avoid the limelight. She speaks rarely to media, keeps to herself, hardly drinks alcohol and is not a networker around the athletics circuit. She was only prepared to consider an interview when the season’s work – culminating in Gout’s 200m national title in Perth – was done.
But when she finally finds the right moment to talk, the woman increasingly known for her visor and sunglasses is warm and open. “I love coaching, this is where the gratefulness comes in, and I feel totally blessed that my purpose is my passion. There’s not too many people who can say that, so I revel in it when you get me talking.”
The motorcycle accident and its legacy of pain is a personal challenge she shares matter-of-factly. It is not the only one. Sheppard does not want to publicly elaborate on the precise details of her life’s darkest days, but she describes herself as being from a “trauma background”. She admits it is only since seeing a counsellor in 2021 that she has been able to psychologically process her experiences.
“What the trauma counsellor was able to do is for me to understand that, ‘Well, OK, I’m like I am, but I survived it’,” she says. “And that’s a big thing, come out the other end and go, ‘Well, I’ve accepted the fact that it made me who I am, but it’s made me strong’.”
The developments in her personal life have been significant, as she has been able to address these historical trials and find some degree of peace. However, Sheppard quickly rejects the notion there has been any change in her as a coach. “No, not at all, my boundaries are the same. If anything, I’m probably more stringent in them,” she says.
Sheppard’s approach to her job may not have changed, but the way people treat her has. She is arguably now Australian sport’s most prominent female coach, in a sector that isfailing to provide opportunities for women. During recent meets, she has had young female coaches come up to her and call her an inspiration. “It blew me away, I was like, ‘Really?’ Because normally I’d get people think I’m hard to get along with,” she says.
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People have even begun to recognise her around Brisbane. “I went to the local shop to do some grocery shopping, and people were smiling at me. And I’m like, excuse my French, ‘What the fuck is going on? People don’t smile at me’,” she says. “I’ve come home and I said to my son, ‘I don’t know what’s going on, but I think my fuck-off aura is dropping’.”
Sheppard has spent three decades grinding in the far from glitzy junior Australian athletics scene, committing to thousands of hours on tracks and ovals in a pursuit known for its inconsistent pay. After becoming involved with Jimboomba and then Sunnybank LittleAthleticswith her children, Sheppard worked at Woolworths before securing a job at Ipswich Grammar in the uniform shop in 2003.
That presented the chance to train the school’s athletes, and Sheppard quickly developed a passion for working with young sprinters and high jumpers. She took pride in integrating new techniques in dynamic stretching and a focus on recovery. With a growing stable of committed teenagers, Sheppard realised her approach – demanding, direct and advocating discipline – was effective. But without an elite athletics career or involvement in high-performance programs at glamorous sport institutes, she toiled around as a peripheral figure in the sport.
Sheppard concedes her demeanour might have rubbed some people the wrong way. “Most probably people would have said, I’m unapproachable, I’m not pleasant,” she says. “I didn’t really care what people thought about me because when I go to a meet, I would normally have anywhere from eight to 15 athletes competing, so I’m there doing my job, I’m not there socialising, having chit chats or anything like that.”
The success of Sheppard’s students became impossible to ignore. She was instrumental in the development of Joseph Deng, the Australian men’s 800m record holder until it was broken by Peter Bol two weeks ago, and few junior squads in the country have higher standards. Jonathan Kasiano, winner of the under-18 200m title two weeks ago in Perth, is another in her stable.
“I’ve never advertised for any athletes to come to me,” Sheppard says. “I just kind of knew that I had a gift for it. It’s not being an educator like in the teaching system, because, I’m a little bit old school I’m afraid, I don’t have any airs and graces about me. I am pretty dogmatic, so when you’re here in front of me, you need to train.”
While Gout has handled the spotlight so far, his coach anticipates there will be challenges both on and off the track. “Things will plateau, that’s a natural part,” Sheppard says. “It has to come to a ‘Bang, OK, now we’ve got to find our next adaption phase to go up’.”
The teenager’s performances have already made him Australia’s star athletic attraction. Yet it is potential that makes his story so compelling. Sheppard has established a reputation for her work with junior athletes, though she says she feels “quite capable” of working with Gout all the way to his peak.
“For us to go to the top – we’re still a long way from there – and because we know that’s our end goal, we don’t get too wrapped up into the good things that come,” she says. “They’re stepping stones, and that’s how I’ve tried to teach Gout. There’s no clear path up.”