Fifty years ago 21-year-old sprinter Bob Wishart first hit the headlines when he won the Bendigo Thousand, at the time the richest professional footrace in Australia.

And at Doncaster on February 18 he celebrated the ‘golden anniversary’ of that win when he scored his second success in Australian Masters’ Athletics’ most prestigious single event, The Landy Trophy.

While the former might have been a greater thrill at the time, there’s not much doubt the latter provided a greater insight into the remarkable talent of Wishart, who at 71 is one of Australia’s most highly respected Masters’ athletes.

Over the years he has concentrated on his professional career, winning more than 20 Gift events, but this has been punctuated with numerous medals at all levels of Masters’ in events up to 400 metres.

Wishart is still running professionally, giving most of his younger rivals a start, but is particularly proud of the fact that both his son, Darren, 46, and his grandson, Nicholas, 16, will this year contest the Bendigo meeting at which he had his moment of glory all those years ago.

Wishart, who runs at Mentone venue, has always been a dazzling sprinter and has never been beaten in a 200 metres heat of The Landy but he has always struggled with the 1000 metres heat and his inability to see out the distance has cost him his chance on more than one occasion.

This time, however, he showed greatly improved stamina to win his long heat, starting from the 271m mark and running the journey in 2min. 36.9sec, the fourth fastest time of the night.

Once he was qualified for the final, over 400 metres, Wishart was always going to be the one to beat and ultimately did it easily, coming from the 102m mark running 44.89s to score by 13 metres from Kathy Heagney (112m) with the veteran of the field, 83-year-old Leo Coffey (142m), a further eight metres away third.

The final provided yet another disappointment for Heagney and Coffey, who also filled the placings behind Queensland star Hugh Coogan last year.

Heagney, in fact, has now run four seconds in the final, two of them behind Coogan, whose five Landy wins also included two in which Wishart was runner-up.

Wishart’s first Landy win, in 2009, was particularly sweet as he had finished second to Coogan the previous two years.

This year’s event also provided a thrill for Doncaster’s venue manager Richard Trembath, who finished fourth in what was his first Landy appearance since a hip replacement in 2009. Trembath now has 11 Landy heat wins to his credit and has contested seven finals without ever winning one.

Nevertheless, his efforts made a significant contribution to Doncaster’s success in the venue teams event, The Landy Shield, which had been held for the previous three years by East Burwood.

Doncaster’s other top contributors were Consolation winner David McConnell, who ran two seconds in his heats, and Campbell McLennan, who had a heat win and a third before finishing seventh in the final.

McConnell came from the 69m mark and ran a creditable 48.26s in beating Andrew Watts and Richard Wearmouth, while Collingwood venue manager Peter Gaunt ran 54.60s in winning the Young Guns final (Under 55) from Craig Harris and Graham Walter.

The main supporting event on the program, The Doncaster Dash, for members of Doncaster Little Athletics, was dominated by the backmarkers with victory going to scratch marker Nicholas Florio (15) from Clement Chan (14) off 2m with the backmarker Ryan McLeish (16), who started from 2m behind scratch, third.

Athletics icon John Landy, a former Governor of Victoria, presented the trophies for all events. Landy consented to being interviewed on the track microphone by former Collingwood runner Wayne Fitzsimmons, in what turned out to be one of the highlights of the night.