The Victorian Athletic League organises professional footrunning events ranging from 70 to 3200 metres. The most famous of these events is the Stawell Gift which has been run since 1878 and hosts the richest footrace in Australia. Many other gifts are held around Victoria in country and metro locations including Ballarat, Bendigo, Wangaratta, Maryborough, Keilor, Yarrawonga, Ringwood, Rye and Olympic Park. Races are run under a handicap system which makes races competitive. Each race has a different handicap limit. Generally, the greater the sum of the prize money for a race, the less handicap is available, limiting the class of runners that can win. Runners are awarded prize money when making finals and bookmaking occurs at major meets.
History of Professional Running.
The oldest professional carnival in Victoria is the Maryborough Gift which celebrated its 155th anniversary on New years Day 2016.
Present Day Professional Footrunning.
Australia's best known footrace is the Stawell Gift, held at Easter since 1878. The other major carnival that has been run continuously for more than 100 years is the Burnie Gift in Tasmania. It was first run in 1885.
The status as the richest carnival was challenged for a time in NSW with the running of the Botany Bay Gift Carnival which, in the 1990s. boasts total prize money of $120,000 and $70,000 for its main race with a $50,000 first prize. The excellent event, however, faded from the scene when sponsorship became difficult to maintain.
The Stawell Carnival has a total prize money pool of $90,000. The main race, the Stawell Gift, is over 120m and the winner receives $40, 000.
There are many other carnivals and events conducted under handicap foot-running conditions throughout the nation each year.
Apart from Stawell and Burnie, some of the more famous long-running carnivals are the Bay Sheffield Carnival in South Australia, Bendigo and Ballarat in Victoria, the Christmas Carnivals in North Western Tasmania, and an annual Gift on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Temora and Macksville Carnivals in New South Wales. Since the late 1980s athletics and the Olympic Games have been 'open', meaning that the so-called amateurs and professionals can all compete together for prize money without being penalised or discriminated against.
History of the Victorian Athletic League.
The Victorian Athletic League was established in 1895. Professional running in Australia began in the gold-mining days and boomed in areas where miners were prospecting and digging for gold. The miners raced against each other for the gift of a gold nugget offered by the local publican or mine owner. The miners raced over various distances but the main race was run over the Sheffield distance of 130 yards.
In the 1860s big money began to creep into the sport which attracted a wealth of athletic talent. Competitions took on a carnival atmosphere and crowds flocked to see local champions. In April 1878, nearly two thousand people witnessed the running of the first Stawell Easter Gift which was won by 24-year-old farmer W.J.Millard. The sport of professional running continued to grow. Big prize money and heavy betting attracted talented athletes as well as a range of shady characters.
By the early 1890s, the sport of professional running was in crisis. Athletes running under false names, hiding past performance, corrupt officials and other controversies led the need to establish a controlling body for professional running in Victoria. The Victorian Athletic League was formed on 15 April 1895 when RV Lewis of Benalla was elected president and Hastings Bell of Stawell was appointed secretary. Originally the League was administered from Stawell and formulated rules and regulations for country towns that conducted sports carnivals. It also acted as arbitrator in any disputes arising at those carnivals.
In 1902 a regular office was established in Melbourne and the Victorian Athletic League began to promote the sport of professional running. Carnivals were held in Melbourne and major Victorian towns and became extremely popular with the sporting public. 1917, a dispute over prize money led to a breakaway group, the Victorian Athletic Association, being formed and conducting event in opposition to the Victorian Athletic League. In 1921, through the mediation of the Stawell Athletic Club, the Victorian Athletic League and the Victorian Athletic Association were merged. ES Herring of Maryborough was elected president and Joe Bull appointed as secretary. The Victorian Athletic League established an office in Brunswick and held mid week sports meetings were held at White City in Tottenham, at the Exhibition Grounds and at the Monodrome. During the 1920s and 1930s, popularity of professional running grew tremendously and the VAL staged World Sprint Championships.
At the outbreak of World War II, many Victorian Athletic League clubs abandoned their meetings. However, the federal cabinet granted permission for the Victorian Athletic League to conduct footrunning at Maribyrnong for the benefit of athletes on leave from the armed forces and men employed in essential services. After World War II the Victorian Athletic League gained strength and had nearly fifteen hundred registered runners, three hundred trainers and was conducted sports carnivals at seventy centres across Victoria from mid November to early June.
By the early 1960s, interest in professional running had waned. The number of registered runners had declined and only twenty-eight carnivals were held across Victoria. In an effort to revive the sport, the Victorian Athletic League invited champion international athletes such as Bob Hayes, Alan Simpson and Robbie Hutchison to compete in Australia. In 1969, the St Kilda club staged the richest footrace in the world with a first prize of $2,000. In 1977, the Victorian Athletic League undertook substantial administrative changes becoming an incorporated company, establishing a computerised record of handicaps and results, and commissioning the use of an electronic race finish recording machine. After years of segregation between amateur and professional athletics, in 1986 saw the dawning of open athletics when Stawell Gift winners Chris Perry and John Dinan competed for Australia at the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh.
In recent years, the Victorian Athletic League has extended its athletic format beyond club carnivals. The League moved into conducting special events such as the famous Dandy Dollar Dash at VFL/AFL football matches, the Moomba Mile run down Bourke Street in the Melbourne CBD, 400 metres series' during international cricket matches at the MCG and sprint events during horse races at Moonee Valley. In 2001, the Victorian Athletic League moved offices to be co-located with Athletics Victoria at Olympic Park in Melbourne. The League began to form a strong alliance with Athletics Victoria through formal affiliation, sharing resources and establishing a dual-registration process.
Athletes that have run in Professional Footrunning Events.
- Cathy Freeman
- Linford Christie
- Robert De Castella
- Josh Ross
- Jana Rawlinson
- Tamsyn Lewis
- Nova Peris-Kneebone
- Melinda Gainsford-Taylor
- Madeleine Pape (Australian Olympian)
- Bola Lawal (Nigerian Olympian)
- George McNeill (Scotland)
- J.L. Ravelomanantsoa (Madagascar)
- Rick Dunbar
Rye Gift.
Held on the second Saturday of January every year, the Rye Gift attracts tourists celebrating the Christmas period and New Year. It has bookies and the track for the 120m is on a slight decline.
Past Winners 2000-2020 (Men's)
2000 R Devalle
2001 M Moresi
2002 C Touhy
2003 C Foley
2004 C Dunbar
2005 G Brown
2006 D Burgess
2007 M Callard
2008 P O'Dwyer
2009 R Medford
2010 Douglas Greenough
2011 Craig Rollinson
2012 Cam Dunbar
2013 Bros Kelly
2014 Matt Carter
2015 Paul Tancredi
2016 Noddy Angelakos
2017 Nathan Riali
2018 Maddie Coates
2019 Aaron Leferink
2020 Matt Burleigh
Past Winners 2000-2020 (Women's)
2000 A Fearnley
2001 J Chehadei
2002 K Moore
2003 A Deery
2004 A Deary
2004 A Deery
2006 C White
2007 K Steward
2008 M Dean
2009 A Crook
2010 Katie Moore
2011 Alice Platten
2012 Eleni Gilden
2013 Stephanie Mollica
2014 Jessica Payne
2015 Taylah Perry
2016 Celia Cosgriff
2017 Ebony Lane
2018 Holly Dobbyn
2019 Kysha Praciak
2020 Bree Masters
Ringwood.
Hosted by the Ringwood Professional Athletic club this event is held usually in January. Its gift has ranged from 120m, 200m and 400m over the years. Currently the Gift race is held over 400m.
Past Winners
2003 E King
2004 G Mawer
2005 J Hooper
2006 J Boulton
2007 C White
2008 D Collinge
2009 D Steinhauser
2010 S Woodrow
2011 T West
2012 D Girolamo
2013 J Blake
2014 L Stevens
2015 L Coop
2016 G Mitchell
2017 D Haigh
Wangaratta.
This event attracts both VAL and NSWAL competitors because of the close proximity of the event. Professional cycling events are also held at the same time as the footrunning.
Past Winners
2000 P Walsh
2001 M Callard
2002 E Everton
2003 J Hilditch (Scotland)
2004 J Lewis
2005 D Arthur
2006 J Boulton
2007 A Flanagan
2008 C Foley
2009 R Ballard
2010 G Stephens
2011 T Ireland
2012 C Dunbar
2013 R Parkinson
2014 M Hargreaves
2015 P Tancredi
2016 P Tancredi
2017 H Kerr
2018 H Wyllie
2019 J Bailey
2020 J Bailey
Ballarat.
The Ballarat Gift as a strong history dating back to 1949. It has been held at City Oval, Sebastopol Oval and Northern Oval where VFL team the North Ballarat Roosters play. It was first conducted in 1949 and won by Ted Marantelli. During much of the 1970s and 1980s the only Gift conducted in Ballarat was the Sebastopol Gift. After the demise of the Sebatopol Gift in 1988, the Ballarat Gift returned to the VAL calendar in 1989 at the City Oval.
After traditionally being held in February since inception, in 2010 the Ballarat Gift was moved to the weekend after the Stawell Easter Gift (April). With the assistance of the Goldfields Council, the Gift was worth a record $40,000. With all six Stawell Gift finalists entered, the 2010 Ballarat Gift final featured four of them including Stawell Gift winner Tom Burbidge. The Gift was won by 44-year-old Ballarat based, self trained athlete, Peter O'Dwyer. It was O'Dwyer's second Ballarat Gift after winning the race in 1996.
Past Winners (since it was resurrected in 1989)
Bendigo.
The Bendigo Opal is held around March every year and coincides with the International Cycling Madison. It holds the richest 400m footrace in the world.
Past Winners
2003 Duncan Tippins
2004 Mark Howard
2005 Nathan Dixon
2006 Tommy Neim
2007 Nick Magree
2008 Glenn Stephens
Stawell Gift.
The Stawell Gift is considered the country's and quite possibly world's most prestigious professional footrace. Over 120m it is televised across the country and thousands are at Stawell every year at Easter.
Stawell Gift Winners 1990-2018.
History of finalists:
References.
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