He was cheered on to the track each time he entered. Careered around the outer fence high-fiving young kids and a surprising number of older folk after each race, even though, metaphorically at least, he was borne out of the arena on his shield. Results were immaterial: he was the king of Central Park.
Who? Gout Gout, that’s who. The 17-year-old from Ipswich in Queensland has been the talk of the Stawell Gift since the moment it was announced he would be running between the lane ropes up the 120-metre the grass straight in Australia’s best-known, if not necessarily best, sprint race. In between announcement and arrival Gout kept the pot boiling with a (windy) sub-20 seconds 200 at the Queensland state titles and then a 19.84 (also windy) to win the national senior title and sub-10-second 100s (need we add windy, AGAIN!) in winning the U20 title in the short sprint.
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But Stawell? Stawell is different – as any bar-room expert in the pub across the road from the football ground will tell you, often before you ask even. And Gout, along with Lachlan Kennedy, world indoor silver medallist at 60 metres and selected, alongside Gout, this week in the team for the world championships in Tokyo, joins the likes of Olympic 100 champion Linford Christie and former 100 world record holder Asafa Powell, in departing chastened by the experience (though I don’t recall either man, nor any of the others brought down to earth at Stawell, being cheered off in the manner of Gout).
Even before the cheering had ceased to echo around the old timber grandstands, there were mutterings of discontent. Having made it through Saturday’s heats with apparent ease, first Kennedy, running the first of the six semi-finals, and Gout, in the last, were run out. An appropriately named teenager, Dash Muir, held off the charging Kennedy by half-a-metre, running 12.18 to 12.24, Muir started off a mark of 7.75 metres, Kennedy was the outright backmarker in the Gift off 0.25.
Four more races and an inconvenient rainstorm later, Gout went down to 28-year-old schoolteacher John Evans. Evans, fastest heat winner and off a mark of 9.75, was two metres clear of Gout’s 12.35 from his mark of one metre. The last two semi-finals had been delayed briefly by the heavy downpour. An online report bundled the delay, the rain and the loss together and labelled it “sabotage” of Gout’s chances.
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The mainstream media reports were more considered but then The Age chimed in with an editorial characterising Stawell as “the Gift that decided not to keep on giving.” In the manner of those turn of the (twentieth) century headlines which thundered “we warn the tsar of all the Russias”, the paper proclaimed it was time for the Victorian Athletic League (VAL) “to review how it works out handicaps.”
There are certainly things the VAL could do, such as wonder whether the time around which the handicaps are set – currently 12.25 seconds – remains realistic for all runners, and especially backmarker giving up to 10 metres start to the outmarkers, to achieve. Back in the day we didn’t really know what shape Christie, Powell and other internationals were in when they ran the Gift but it’s a more pertinent observation after two blokes running 10 seconds flat for 100 metres are concerned. Kennedy ran 12.23 and 12.24 in his heat and semi, Gout 12.31 and 12.35, and neither got through to the final.
But it’s also important to note there was no hint of gaming the system about John Evans’ mark. Again, this was an element in some of the more spectacular performances by “smokies” – those who appear at Stawell in form several metres better than their handicap – in the recent past. The VAL has much better systems in place to minimise such practices. What should be looked at, however, is whether the maximum handicap – currently 10 metres – should be tightened.
Maybe, too, the manner of qualifying from semi-finals to final could be examined. The word ‘iconic’ is currently doing enough lifting to win the Olympic super-heavyweight gold medal but its use in almost any reference to Stawell and the Gift is justified. One of these iconic features is six semis with just the winner of each going through to the final. Two beaten semi-finalists going through as “fastest losers” would have seen Kennedy in this year’s final, though would still not have got Gout in.
The fact Gout drew the eventual winner in his semi-final can simply be put down to bad luck. The six fastest heat winners were allocated one to each of the semis, Gout drew the short straw and wound up running against Evans.
But there is a problem. Years back I did some simple number-crunching. As Age journalist Mchael Gleeson noted this week: “Ideally in handicapped races, if the handicaps are accurate, all runners should hit the line at the same time.”
Note, “ideally’; in practice, things work out differently. Over time, however, in a system like Stawell currently employs, the distribution of winners and finalists from the backmarks should be roughly the same as those from the outmarks. It isn’t and never has been. Stawell is heading up towards its 150th staging, yet just nine winners have started from a mark inside five metres. Certainly, there would be more runners in the mid-range of the handicap scale, but not enough to explain such lop-sided outcomes.
Like athletics in general, Stawell was slow to offer opportunities to women. Since the turn of the century, though, two women – former national record holder Melissa Breen and this year’s winner Bree Rizzo – have won from scratch. In the same period Josh Ross is the only man to win from the ultimate back mark.
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Rizzo was such a great story. So, too, this year was John Evans. Ryan Tarrant won off 3.75 metres in 2023. But the men’s Stawell Gift needs more men’s winners off the back marks. If they come back after their first experience, Gout or Lachie Kennedy would be excellent candidates.
