Mitch O’Neill wins the Wangaratta Gift on Australia Day this year.
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This year’s Easter Stawell Gift hope, former Corowa resident Mitch O‘Neill, is in his best form leading up to the most prestigious footrace in Australia, with a $40,000 first prize.
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The 26-year-old has been training solidly since June 2024 pre-season officially began and which includes three sash wins.
A lot of his focus has been on the 200m track, and the professional gift circuit where he won at Cobden, at the New Year’s Eve Burnie gift carnival invitational 120m race beating Olympian Jacob Despard, and at the Wangaratta Gift on the Australia day long weekend, where he took out the open 70m race in a personal best time.
“I have been working on my start a lot, so the win in the 70m was fulfilling knowing I've improved over the shorter sprints,” O’Neill told The Free Press.
On the same weekend as the Wangaratta Gift, O’Neill travelled to Canberra with his coach Michael Doodson to run in the 200m at the ACT state championships.
There he ran a solid season’s best on very tired legs in a heat time of 21.15 seconds, enough to make the final where he claimed the bronze medal.
“This was even more fulfilling than Wangaratta in a sense, because it had been over a year since I found myself back to the form I had in 2023, which got me on the national podium,” he said.
“My priority aspiration would certainly be to achieve something even more memorable this season, to go beyond anything I've ever done before, something that I've only ever dreamed of.”
O’Neill expressed a “huge, deserving thank you” to his coach Doodson who took on the coaching role just one year ago.
“We have achieved so much already, certainly more than we thought was possible this season,” he said.
“These big events like State, Nationals and Stawell are yet to come, but it feels like we couldn't be any better prepared.
“Michael has me fitter than I've ever been in my life and my start is at its best.”
On the podium after winning the Wangaratta Gift in January.
O’Neill says the question is his top end speed, which has always been and still is his greatest attribute.
It's the same question mark that surrounds this year’s Stawell Gift.
“We know that if my top end is back to what it was, or maybe even beyond that, then all the pieces will have come together and we'll be ready to bring the Stawell Gift back to Corowa and Wollongong,” he said.
O’Neill doesn’t talk too much to anyone about his sporting dreams, but he thinks those closest to him know exactly what they are, and that they've known for a while.
He has achieved so much this season already, more than any other season at this point.
But since taking out the gift in Cobden he has an “undeniable feeling” that the impossible is now possible, that he can climb the unclimbable mountain and reach for what only a select few have achieved since the gold rush times of 1878.
“I have been eluded by the gates of Central Park (Stawell) since seeing them for the first time three years ago,” O’Neill said.
“The grandstand, the grass, the colours and the commentators - it's always been eerily familiar to me. It's always felt like home.”
Now he says it feels like one big countdown to the final confrontation on Easter Monday, where it will be up to fate and destiny as to who claims glory in the 2025 Powercor Stawell Gift.”
Go Mitch, your hometown is behind you all the way.
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