Ray Quarrell has been coming to St Helens for 53 years. He won his first race here in 1971.
He has trained a Stawell Gift winner, two if you count his influence on Jacob Despard, and I can’t remember the total of Gift winners over his career. It’s a lot.
But he had a different kind of first here at St Helens.
Somehow he managed to get 6 of his runners in the Open 400 final.
Looking good for a win right? Well yes, but it got bigger than that.
1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. If you know of this every occurring before we’d love to know. Message us or add it to the comments.
Congratulations Ray, Zoe, Lucy, BJ and Rebecca! Oh and Ray... top job!
Lily James made the final of the Gift in Burnie. Dad was ecstatic.
Brother, Logan said something about tears, but he didn’t say whether it was him, or dad and coach (Greg), or Lilly with wet eyes.
Not a Gift win for Lily at Burnie, but she was happy to be there and looking to the future.
Well, the future was just a couple of weeks away as it turned out, and now the 2025 St Helens Women’s Gift Sash is looking for some wall space at the James place.
Lily first, then Lucy Carter and Pamela Siggins, with 32 hundredths between the three.
Brother Logan was always going to suffer from some handicap penalties after winning the Hobart and Burnie Gifts this year and he didn’t make the final at St Helens.
But he did make a bit of a statement later in the day when he ran the 1000metres.
Apparently four of the sprinters, Logan, Adam French, Jarred Gilroy, and Jordan Maynard had put their heads together and decided to run the 1000 for a bit of fun.
But as fate would have it Adam and Jordan made the final of the 400 and had to give the 1000 a miss and Jarred had an injury scare so Logan was left out the back on the novices handicap of 90 metres, all alone.
He looked ok for the first 100 or so, but the grimace grew with every hundred and the last 500 looked excruciating.
When I suggested that it was probably 500meters too long for him, Logan laughed and told me that it was “980metres too long!!!”.
A lot of us enjoyed it anyway Logan. Thanks for putting on a Show. It gave some of us that don’t run an idea of where we’d finish… and it wouldn’t have been flattering.
Winner of the 1000 was Cassandra Sheehan… a ‘respectable’ distance in front of Logan, with most of the field between them.
The men’s gift was impossible to pick from the crowd. It took a while to sort it out, but Jaydn Crawford got the nod by two hundredths from Jordan Maynard and Andrew Hay third.
The Father/Son axe battle was an inspiring story.
Matthew Gurr, the father, is something of a legend having won the Tree-Felling Championship at theSydney Show almost every year from 1987 until 2006. And as son Daniel (World Champion Tree-Feller) mentioned earlier in the day “has his name was alrteady all over the Tasmanian Tree-Felling Championship trophy”. Daniel wanted his title.
So this was the old gun up against the rising star… with no guarantee that either of them would win. I never saw either of them within five metres of each other all day, so I suspect there was some tension. Mind you, I wasn’t there all day, so they might still be getting along.
After the chips stopped flying, it was Daniel on the top step and dad, Mathew one step down to Daniel’s right. A mostly happy ending. Only a Dead-heat would have been more fitting.
A great day all round and dozens of good stories.
Great job St Helens!
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