April 6 (Reuters) – American sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson powered to victory from the back of the field at Australia’s oldest and richest handicap footrace, the Stawell Gift, on Monday.
The annual race, which offers a prize of A$40,000 ($27,628), is run on a 120m uphill grass track with athletes handicapped according to ability and previous performances in sprints.
Richardson, who won silver in the 100m at the Paris Olympics and was on the gold medal-winning U.S. 4×100 relay team, crossed the finish line with an adjusted time of 13.15 seconds, ahead of Australian teenager Charlotte Nielsen.
Nielsen had a nine-metre head start on the 26-year-old Richardson, who qualified for the six-woman final after a photo finish in the semis.
“Thank you. The love, the support, the true enjoyment that I had on the track, I know everybody’s having here. I had a great time,” Richardson told Channel 7.
Richardson became the third athlete to win the women’s Gift from scratch since it was introduced in 1989, after Bree Rizzo in 2025 and Melissa Breen in 2012.
In the men’s event, Richardson’s boyfriend and 2019 world 100m champion Christian Coleman failed to advance from the semi-finals, with Australia’s Olufemi Komolafe winning the final.
The race has been run in the small Victorian town of Stawell every Easter weekend since 1878 except for four years during World War Two and in 2020, when the COVID pandemic forced its cancellation.
($1 = 1.4478 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Aadi Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Peter Rutherford)
