Victorian Athletic League

The Victorian Athletic League organises professional footrunning events ranging from 70 to 3200 metres. The most famous of these events is the Stawell Gift which has been run since 1878 and hosts the richest footrace in Australia. Many other gifts are held around Victoria in country and metro locations including Ballarat, Bendigo, Wangaratta, Maryborough, Keilor, Yarrawonga, Ringwood, Rye and Olympic Park. Races are run under a handicap system which makes races competitive. Each race has a different handicap limit. Generally, the greater the sum of the prize money for a race, the less handicap is available, limiting the class of runners that can win. Runners are awarded prize money when making finals and bookmaking occurs at major meets.

The oldest professional carnival in Victoria is the Maryborough Gift which celebrated its 155th anniversary on New years Day 2016.

Australia's best known footrace is the Stawell Gift, held at Easter since 1878. The other major carnival that has been run continuously for more than 100 years is the Burnie Gift in Tasmania. It was first run in 1885.

The status as the richest carnival was challenged for a time in NSW with the running of the Botany Bay Gift Carnival which, in the 1990s. boasts total prize money of $120,000 and $70,000 for its main race with a $50,000 first prize. The excellent event, however, faded from the scene when sponsorship became difficult to maintain.

The Stawell Carnival has a total prize money pool of $90,000. The main race, the Stawell Gift, is over 120m and the winner receives $40, 000.

There are many other carnivals and events conducted under handicap foot-running conditions throughout the nation each year.

Apart from Stawell and Burnie, some of the more famous long-running carnivals are the Bay Sheffield Carnival in South Australia, Bendigo and Ballarat in Victoria, the Christmas Carnivals in North Western Tasmania, and an annual Gift on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Temora and Macksville Carnivals in New South Wales. Since the late 1980s athletics and the Olympic Games have been 'open', meaning that the so-called amateurs and professionals can all compete together for prize money without being penalised or discriminated against.

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