Next year will be a busy one for Victoria’s Masters athletes and for many the first target will be Doncaster’s feature event, The Landy Trophy, to be run on Monday, February 18.

It will be followed by The Manningham Mile, now to be run as an age-graded event for Masters, to be held at Doncaster on March 11, the Monday before the Victorian Championships, which are scheduled for March 16 and 17.

These are closely followed by the Australian Championships in Canberra over the Easter weekend, March 29 to 31. Later in the year the Australian Masters’ in Geelong early in October are closely followed by the World Masters’ Championships in Porto Alegre, Brazil, from October 15 to 27.

Entries for the ‘new look’ Landy Trophy will close on Monday, February 4 at the usual entry fee of $10.

The Landy Trophy, first held in 2000, is run from handicaps based on the Age-Graded Percentage Scale with competitors contesting heats over both 200 metres and 1000 metres before the top qualifiers go on to finals over 400 metres.

The event allows for eight heats over each distance with points awarded for all finishing positions, from first to last.

Under the new format, however, the distance round will be combined into only four heats.

The first two heats of the 1000 metres will be combined, as will heats 3 and 4 and so on. This will mean that potentially there will be a field of 16 in each race but qualifying points will be awarded as if the two heats had been run separately.

In the case of there being only seven sprint heats, which sometimes happens, the last three of the long heats will be combined.

Doncaster officials believe the bigger fields will provide more interesting races and will not affect the allocation of qualifying points. Field sizes should not be a problem as the handicaps mean that generally athletes are stretched out over anything up to about 250 metres at the start.

Racing can be expected to be tighter in the middle age-groups of course, but this will merely create more competitive events which should provide a better viewing spectacle.

The absence of The Manningham Mile from Landy night will tighten the program, which will still feature The Doncaster Dash, a 100 metres event for members of Doncaster Little Athletics.

The rescheduling of the Mile, in fact, will provide Masters who specialize in middle distance events with the opportunity to contest both events, the Landy and the Mile, which, if nothing else, will provide them with an ideal lead-in to the State and National Championships.

Another change to the Mile is that, whereas in the past the event has been run from distance handicaps, in future it will be run from time handicaps based on the Age-Graded Percentage scale.

This means all contestants will have to run the full distance, with younger athletes giving older competitors a timed start. Female runners will also receive a concession from the males.

Landy night will still feature the magnificent array of trophies which has long been associated with it, the feature of which is the perpetual trophy, a framed action shot of John Landy, former Governor of Victoria and one of the icons of Australian athletics.

Entries for The Landy Trophy close on February 4.