Ballarat has always been a proud sporting city.
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And, with three Olympic gold medallists, dominant VFL and schoolboy football teams, an underdog racing hero, a rising cricket star and even a media shy Brownlow Medallist, Ballarat has good reason to boast.
Ballarat broke through for its first Olympic gold medal in 1996 when Ballarat-Sebastopol Gun Club member Russell Mark captured double trap shooting gold in Los Angeles.
Twelve years after Marks’ triumph, swimmer Shayne Reese won gold in the 4x100 metre relay at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
But Ballarat’s third Olympic gold medal was probably its most sentimental, with race walker Jarred Tallent finally awarded the 2012 London Olympics 50-kilometre gold medal in a special ceremony in Melbourne last year after initial winner Russian Sergey Kirdyapkin was disqualified as a drug cheat.
"To be the first gold medal awarded in Melbourne since the Olympics here is extra special," Tallent told The Courier. "It's a victory for clean sport and justice has been served."
When the Lake Wendouree rowing course was created in 1868, there was probably no thought it would play host to some of the world’s best rowers.
But in 1956, Ballarat hosted the Melbourne Olympic rowing events to much fanfare.
However, it is not widely known Lake Learmonth was the first Olympic organising committee pick but, as The Courier reports: “it is an excellent watercourse, but, being in undeveloped country, was completely wanting in shore facilities.”
While Ballarat has had several Commonwealth Games medallists over the years, one gold medal winner is rightly known as the town’s favourite son.
Steve Moneghetti shot to prominence with a surprise marathon bronze medal in the 1986 Commonwealth Games, despite the 10,000 metres being his then pet event, and went on to win gold in Canada in 1994.
His top Olympic marathon placing was fifth in the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
When he was appointed Australia’s Commonwealth Games team chef de mission for the third time, Australian Commonwealth Games Association CEO Craig Phillips.told The Courier: “He is respected by all the athletes who know that he understands what they need and how they feel when they enter the Games village as part of the team”.
Paralympians have also done Ballarat proud with Jodi Willis-Roberts bringing home two shotput gold medals. Buninyong wheelchair athlete Greg Smith won three gold medals at the 2000 Sydney Paralympics in the 5000-metre, 800-metre and 1500-metre events.
After retiring from athletics, Smith took up wheelchair rugby, winning Paralympic silver and gold, and then the Australian flag bearer at the 2012 London games.
Ballarat has also excelled at team sports, including football from the time the first game was played on Saxon Paddock (now the City Oval) on July 31, 1876.
Ballarat entered its first team in the Victorian Football League in 1996, with the North Ballarat Roosters going on to win an historic three-peat between 2008-2010 under the guidance of coach Gerard Fitzgerald.
The Courier reported: “With the grand final victory, North Ballarat can rightly lay claim to being one of the great teams of the VFA/VFL of modern time.”
St Patrick’s College has dominated Victorian schoolboy football for decades, including competing in nine consecutive Herald Sun Shield grand finals, winning seven. The Courier declared: “St Patrick’s College has staked its claim as the best football school ever.”
Ballarat is also the home of one of AFL’s most reluctant superstars, Tony Lockett, who won the Brownlow Medal in 1987 and is still the league’s highest goalkicker.
North Ballarat Football Club historian Stan Digger Roberts followed “Plugger’s” career from a young age and told The Courier: “In the under-12s he was kicking goals from the centre of White Flat Oval – he was always that far ahead of any of the other kids in the game.”
Fellow Brownlow Medal winners Brian Gleeson (1957) and John James (1961) were St Patrick’s College alumni, while Adam Goodes (2003,2006) played with the North Ballarat Rebels.
And our marquee men’s basketball team the Ballarat Miners proved to be giant slayers when they took on the highly fancied Melbourne Tigers in the final of the 1989 VBA Championship and went on to win.
But one of Ballarat’s greatest sporting triumphs was when rank outsider Pirates of Penzance, trained by Darren Weir at Dowling Forest, won the 2015 Melbourne Cup.
Aboard the 100-1 chance was the first female jockey to ever win the prestigious cup, Michelle Payne of the famous Ballarat Payne racing family, while the strapper was her much-loved brother Stevie Payne.
But it was Payne’s after race speech that firmly stamped her in racing folklore.
"To think that Darren Weir has given me a go and it's such a chauvinistic sport, I know some of the owners were keen to kick me off, and John Richards and Darren stuck strongly with me, and I put in all the effort I could and galloped him all I could because I thought he had what it takes to win the Melbourne Cup and I can't say how grateful I am to them. I want to say to everyone else, get stuffed, because women can do anything and we can beat the world.”