Cliff Young Breaks World 24hr Record

May 1999

The race was won by Yiannis Kouros who ran 250km approximately. He entered the race with the purpose of beating some of the smaller Record marks ( 12 hour - 100 miles) but compared with his fantastic performance at Adelaide in 97 he never looked on target to achieve anything outstanding during the course of the race. He left at the 17 hour mark with 200 kilometres to his name which was almost two hours outside his Adelaide record for 200km. He came back at 7 that morning and brought up another 50km before the bell rung at midday.

Last year's winner Helen Stangar entered the race with the intention of having a go at the Women's 100 mile record, but suffered a hamstring injury early in the race and sensibly withdrew by 4 o clock on the Saturday afternoon.

The minor placings were an interesting battle with less than twenty kilometres seperating second to sixth place. Whyalla runner Jerry Zukowski finished second, followed by Michael Grayling, Peter Gray, Cliff Young and Andrew Lucas.

Two walkers lined up for the event. Centurion Merv Lockyer entered the race with the intention of completing a 100km training run. He completed that with relative ease by the 18 hour mark leaving first time racewalker, Phil Essam to go past him and complete 111.13km in his first Ultra Racewalk effort.