Essendon Womens 200m Gift

The highly anticipated Essendon Gift is back for 2023 and brings with it the first 200m of the season! We see an incredible field for this one with 60 entries! Great to see such a well supported competition and particular race as well.

King reigned supreme at Cobden and Mortlake taking out 3 races at the last weekend of comp (70m Open (Mortlake), 70m Womens (Cobden), 100m Women (Cobden)) and lines up off 15m. However we welcome back to the VAL circuit the 2022/23 season Stawell Women's Gift winner and equal-backmarker for this race running of 4m Bella Pasquali! Lining up alongside Bella of the backmark of 4m is Jess Payne who went close to winning this race last season off the same mark. Stawell runner-up O'Dwyer goes from 5m as well setting this up for a potential showdown from the back of the field. Ruby Crisp off 23m is one to watch making the final of this race last season and now she finds herself a metre up as well.

Am I crazy for thinking K. Henderson can win this? Seemingly a tight mark but she seems to be running well after her Stawell pull and wouldn’t put this behind her.
Halle Martin is the other one that sticks out, 17m feels like a good mark for an up and comer
Crisp is my left of field choice, might not be ready to go but she should be able to run the 200m out better than some.

One day out and what do we have...

Split favourites between Jess Payne off 4m and Keely Henderson off 13m both with 4 votes each! A pretty even split of votes though overall, no one big standout from the crowd. Hopefully indicating we are in for a tight race!

Burmeister goes bang to take out the Women's 200m in 23.57 ahead of Kinnersly and Payne. The race definitely lived up to expectations of a close race and again great to see such quality running!