The kid crowned King was trumped by three queens in the Stawell and Ararat Cross Country Club's fifteenth running of the three-kilometre King of the Hill at Ararat last Sunday.
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Sixteen-year-old Gabe Tonks was first to the top of One Tree Hill in the sparkling time of 17.40 minutes to claim just title, but once handicaps were applied three strong girls filled the podium for the very first time in this unique and challenging event in which there are as many "bushed" walkers as runners.
When debutante Tessa Thompson reached the timekeepers she had just seven seconds to spare from Rhonda Rice, desperately close, but her best finish in her tenth attempt to win the race.
Completing the femme trifecta was Paula Pettingill who limped away with a bloodied ankle, and brushed off the pain declaring, "if you run through it you don't feel it."
It was no fluke that king Tonks and queens Thompson and Pettingill had trialled on that unforgiving hill in the days before the race to claim sash, trophy and prize.
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The winner's husband, Mark Thompson, had remarkably imposed his own forty-kilogram handicap...pushing a pram loaded with the couple's two young kids up that torturous hill with seven not-so-gifted athletes still behind him.
"I met and married a gifted runner so I suppose I was destined to try and be one myself," the happy mum, former netballer, gymnast, lacrosse-player, multiple fun run winner and returning netballer said.
"I only really set out to achieve personal best times," she added. "I haven't wanted to run a marathon because I think they take too much of toll on your body."
The true story that was Adrian Van Raaphorst's 600th run with the club, almost forty-one years to the day of his debut, did not end in a fairytale but he did finish in the top 10 to warm applause from club-mates as he crossed the line.
The Van hasn't missed a single King of the Hill, and he of course, has that honour to himself.
The club has a Mothers Day bye before venturing to Rhymney for the 6.5 kilometre Reynolds Family Handicap on Sunday, May 16.
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