By Colin MacGillivray

In the storied 146-year history of the Stawell Gift, there had never been a day like it.

Torrential rain at Stawell’s Central Park nearly derailed Australia’s richest footrace on Monday in what would have been an unprecedented outcome.

Since the race’s inception in 1878, only the Second World War and the COVID-19 pandemic have caused it to be cancelled.

With an estimated 15 centimetres of water covering parts of the track at the scheduled start for the women’s final at 1.45pm, Stawell Gift Event Management chairman Murray Emerson admitted organisers were unsure if the feature races would be able to proceed.

“We put it back to 2.30pm, then 3.30pm, then 4.30pm,” he said.

“Our groundskeeper from Northern Grampians Shire Council assured us that if the rain would stop for half an hour, we’d be able to continue.

“We were having pretty urgent meetings with everybody – the Victorian Athletic League, Sport360, the curator and my board – and we just kept pushing the two main races back an hour at a time hoping we’d get that window of opportunity.

“The TV time was running out and there were a lot of things happening in a short period of time.

“We finally got that window of opportunity and we got the two main races run and won.”

The winners of the two feature races were Queenslander Chloe Mannix-Power and Victorian Jack Lacey.

Mannix-Power lived up to her pre-race favouritism, exploding off a backmark of 4.25 metres to win from Chloe Kinnersly in a time of 13.417 seconds.

Lacey raced off a 9.5-metre mark in the men’s final, barely holding off backmarker Jake Ireland to win by just 0.009 of a second.

Mannix-Power, who comes from a beach-running background, said the sodden conditions suited her.

“We were actually praying for the rain because the rain suits us. It’s like running on the beach, which we’ve been training on in the rain for the past three weeks,” she said.

Australian Olympian Peter Bol was one of the main drawcards of this year’s gift, racing in a 1000-metre invitational that started as the rain set in on Monday.

Bol, who finished fourth in the 800-metre final at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, ran off scratch as other competitors started as much as 32 metres ahead of him.

Bol nearly tracked down eventual winner Riley Bryce, given a 10-metre mark, just falling short on the line.

Mr Emerson said crowds had remained engaged throughout the day despite the weather delays.

“I was amazed at the large number of spectators and competitors who bore with us until we got the races underway,” he said.

“From a crowd point of view, while Peter Bol was running they were cheering and yelling and encouraging him.

“When he just didn’t get there, the whole crowd went ‘awww’. They were disappointed that he didn’t win, but everyone was sensationally happy about his performance.

“To have him at Stawell on his way to the Paris Olympics was absolutely fantastic.”

Mr Emerson also praised the patience of the athletes.

“I haven’t had too much feedback from the competitors, although I suspect we might hear a bit of feedback over a period of time as to whether it might have been done a little bit differently,” he said.

“We had a window of opportunity, and that’s the opportunity we took. In my opinion and the board’s opinion, it worked out really well.”

Mr Emerson said this year’s events would only add to the legend of the gift.

“That’s the history of the Stawell Gift, isn’t it? There’s always some intrigue for one reason or another. This year it was because of the weather,” he said.

“A huge congratulations to everyone who got the job done.”

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