WENDOUREE trainer Michael Benoit has his best chance yet to look towards the winner's dais at the Ballarat Gift meeting on Sunday at the Northern Oval.
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Benoit has a big stable of quality runners ready to make an assault on the $16,000 Tattersalls Gift meeting which includes free admission for the first time.
The runners include seasoned campaigner Rob Lehmann who has won at Bendigo, his wife Narelle who ran a women's gift at Stawell, and Marcus Cooper who has won the Castlemaine Gift.
Also in Benoit's stable are sisters Jane and Jacquie Hubbard, Jamie Lawler, Nathan Fox and Mark Eibl, who has returned from overseas.
Benoit has also had success with his son Ryan, who won the 100m and 200m and third in the 400m under 16 events at the Victorian Country Athletic Championships at Bendigo recently.
Rob Lehmann, Cooper and Fox, who is returning from a hamstring injury, will run in the Ballarat Gift.
Cooper is off 8.5m, Fox off 5.50m and Lehmann's mark is yet to be announced by the Victorian Athletic League.
Narelle Lehmann is one of the frontmarkers off 24m for the 120m Peter Amor Women's Gift.
The Hubbard sisters are on shorter marks - Jane on 6.5m and Jacquie on 8m.
Benoit, who has been coaching since 1987, said he was pleased to have Eibl, a physiotherapist, back in the fold after a two-year sojourn overseas.
The former top professional sprinter is concentrating only on his coaching at present but has not ruled out a comeback in veteran ranks at a later stage.
Meanwhile, Zoy Frangos and Matt Stewart are now under new coach Peter O'Dwyer who runs in the Len Templar stable.
Frangos, 19, and Stewart, 22, were previously coached by Paul Cleary.
Frangos came first in the 100m and 200m at the Victorian Country Championships while his stablemate was second to him in both events.
"We have just been running well this season and now training under Peter," Frangos said.
He said O'Dwyer had both of them on a longer running program and more intense than they had experienced before.
The Michael Poulton-trained Luke Madden is running off 5.50m in the Gift and will be one of the favourites for the winner's cheque.
Coach Poulton is in Canada with his employment at the moment but will fly back just in time for the Gift.
A celebrity Gift will be held in the Bridge Mall today to promote Sunday's meeting.
Runners will include The Courier photographer Jeremy Bannister.
Also in the field are Cameron Best from WIN-TV, Ballarat MHR Catherine King, North Ballarat Roosters coach Gerard FitzGerald and footballers Lance Brown and Bruce Cohen, Miners coach Ray Borner, Mars M and M character alias Daniel Moorfield, Olympian Anthony Edwards, Ballarat Athletic Club president Peter Chamings and radio personalities Kylie Stevenson, Reg Mullet, Kerry Moultham and Alex "D".
