The 2006 Grand Final Sprint was won by the Carlton player Brendan Fevola (the ‘Fev’). I don’t understand why, but this year it was a handicap event, meaning the players started from different marks.
In the old days (as far as I can remember) all the players would run off scratch, which then meant that the winner was the fastest AFL player around (unless the fastest player was in one of the Grand Final Teams), which I thought was the purpose of the whole thing.
A bit of searching found out that the contestants’ times over 20 metres were sourced from their clubs and sent to Athletics Australia, which then devised the handicap marks for each player. The result of the final sprint did not mean much at all, except that maybe Fev was foxing when the club did their sprint tests, enabling him to have an 8m head start.
Let’s hope they revert to the straight sprint for next year.
Related Pages: AFL, Carlton Blues, Grand Final Sprint
