Motley Crue had a hit with Girls, Girls, Girls in 1987 and the girls of the Stawell Amateur Athletic Club were singing that song after embarrassing the boys with another all-girl trifecta in the five kilometre Stan and Karen Watson Handicap last Saturday.
Not content with smashing the males in nine of the 17 races so far this season, the femme flyers recorded their second one, two, three finish when Matilda Iglesias waltzed her way to an early lead and defied the efforts of Meggy Boan and Rachel Coverdale to run her down.
There’s a line in that (dreadful) song that goes “Yankee girls you just can’t beat” but the boys from Stawell, Ararat and Horsham, who vainly chased tails in the Watson, were muttering the same about Aussie girls in the warm down.
Toughened up by a half-marathon in July, weekly training runs at Stawell’s Big Hill and trail runs at Halls Gap, Matilda won at Horsham earlier in the season and her respectable winning time of 22.44 minutes on Saturday was a personal best.
“I ran a minute faster than I did in winning the same race last year, so I’m pretty excited about the improvement I’ve made,” the smiling winner said. “In fairness to the boys, some of them are faster, but that’s the beauty of handicap racing, which gives everyone a chance of winning.”
The fastest time in the race, a sparkling 19.43 minutes, was recorded by reigning club champion, Nathaniel Warren, who backed up his recent good form to lead the male chasers into fourth place. The unlucky “loser”, however, was leggy Meggy Boan who has now been runner-up in four of her past five starts having won the first race of the season. Justine Tracy might have made her way to the podium, relegating Nathaniel to fifth, had she not missed a left turn and scrambled the field, those who followed off course behind her.
In the Sub-Junior event, Jordan Nitschke won his third race of the season when too strong for Michael Coverdale over the two kilometres with backmarker Liam Davey storming home to finish third.
Stawell Toyota host the fourth to last event of the season tomorrow. Fun runners of all ages are welcome to join the five kilometre event in the Ironbarks and should meet at the North Park clubrooms at 1.30pm. Keith Lofthouse