JOEL Bee has seen the hype about Stawell and now he wants a taste of the action at Central Park.
The Australian 400-metre open finalist will do just that at Stawell today – the first time he has contested a Gift at a Victorian Athletic League meet.
The prospect of lining up in one of the world’s most famous footraces does not daunt him.
Bee, aged 18, lined up in last weekend’s national 400m final against stellar rivals Sean Wroe, John Steffensen and Ben Offereins at Olympic Park.
Three 400m bouts in three days at the nationals has left the Australian junior representative sore.
But the Wendouree Athletics Club runner is keen to shake off the cobwebs at Stawell – especially with the Ballarat Gift on his home turf less than a week later.
“I’m going out there to do well but my main aim is to do well and make the final in Ballarat,” Bee said.
“The crowd at Stawell should be massive but I’ve never run at Ballarat either ... I’m really looking forward to running in Ballarat and hopefully we can get a lot of people down to the event there too.”
Bee has only ever seen the Stawell Gift run on television.
The carnival will mark his third foray on grass.
This season, he broke up the summer with a 400m at Keilor and the 70m handicap at Ararat, where he finished second by .01 of a second.
“The girl that won was off 14m – I had an awesome start but just couldn’t dive enough at the line.”
Bee, trained by Ballarat’s Paul Cleary, is hungry to cap off a big athletics season in which he represented Australia at the world junior championships in Canada, after overcoming stress fractures in his shins, and won the open 400m title at the Victorian country championships.
He opted to skip the junior nationals earlier this year to try his luck in his first national open meet.
Bee qualified fifth fastest for the 400m final and posted a personal best time of 47.34 seconds along the way.
That was the first time he had raced against the likes of John Steffensen, who will be in the mix at Stawell with a handicap of five metres.
Bee will start off the 6.25m mark in the 18th heat.
The Stawell and Ballarat Gifts are Bee’s last events before entering winter training. He is determined to make them count.