The Gift that decided not to keep on giving

In athletics, the difference between success and failure can be less than the blink of an eye. Or more precisely in the tenths, even hundreths, of a second. For runners, a win can turn on the last-gasp stride to the line. An entire season of training can hang on that lightning moment.

The premier sprinting race in Australia is the Stawell Gift. Each Easter long weekend, the town of Stawell, population about 6000, swells for the Gift. The race was first run in 1878, just 25 years after the town was founded, first as Pleasant Creek, and then renamed as Stawell, after Sir William Foster Stawell, chief justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria, and the state’s first attorney-general.

The race has been run continuously except during the Second World War and COVID. It is run over 120 metres up a slight gradient on grass, unlike major competitions such as the World Championships and the Olympics, in which athletes run on rubber surfaces. For most of the year, the field is home to the footy and cricket.

The Gift’s point of difference to other competitions is that it is a handicap event. Therein lies its character and attraction to runners. Therein, also, lies the possibility to throw up results that may confound expectations – such as this year’s results in the men’s events. Monday’s Gift was both a damp squib and a triumph, depending on which side of the line and spectator’s fence you were on.

This year’s event was the most hyped of all Gifts, in part, because of a 17-year-old schoolboy, in year 12, who was competing. Such is the interest in this young man, 7000 spectators gathered in Stawell’s Central Park, double last year’s attendance, to see him run. He is Gout Gout. Of course, there are many other fine sprinters, including Lachlan Kennedy, who has beaten Gout. But in terms of lighting the sky with his blazing runs, Gout is the man of the moment. And yet at Stawell last weekend, both Gout and Kennedy were knocked out in the semis.

Given their recent times in competition, 10 seconds or sub-10 seconds for 100 metres, for instance, it could be argued they were either both terribly unlucky or victims of a handicap system that got it wrong. This is not to diminish the runs by the other competitors, and in particular the ultimate winner, John Evans, who pushed Gout out of the semi. Evans won the final in 11.94 seconds from a 9.75-metre handicap.

Gout Gout after his second-place Stawell Gift semi-final finish.Credit: Luke Hemer

Gout has broken national records from under-16s. Just over a week ago, he recorded 19.84 seconds in the 200-metre national final. It was faster than Usain Bolt ran over 200 metres at the same age. It was done, however, with an illegal tail wind of 2.2m/sec; the limit is 2.0m/sec. Last December, Gout, racing in the Australian All Schools Championships, broke Peter Norman’s record for 200 metres that had stood since the 1968 Mexico Olympics.

Notwithstanding the epithets of precision athleticism sometimes attached to sporting achievements, the human factor can never be discounted, either to the competitor or to those off-field. Handicapping for the Stawell Gift is not done by Gift organisers, but by the Victorian Athletic League. Its guidelines are extensive. Gout and Kennedy were racing against sprinters starting up to 7.5 metres and 8.75 metres ahead of them in their semi-finals.

The concept of handicaps, as it is in horse racing and the weights allocated for jockeys, is to make the contest more competitive by levelling the playing field. As Age sports writer Michael Gleeson wrote: “Ideally in handicapped races, if the handicaps are accurate, all runners should hit the line at the same time. That the two quickest men in Stawell yesterday could not even get to the final would suggest the handicappers had a howler.”

After their races, Gout and Kennedy were gracious in defeat. Too gracious, perhaps, to say what many people at the ground and around Australia must have been saying: how was that possible?

Clearly, the formula did not work. Given what happened, perhaps it’s time for the league to review how it works out handicaps. For if the fastest people in the country are unable to make the finals, they will shun the race and it will wither over time. If the Gift wants to remain Australia’s premier footrace, it should find a way to ensure it is an attractive option for the country’s premier talent.

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