A 61-Year-Old Farmer Won the World's Toughest Footrace

On the morning of 27 April 1983, a Victorian potato farmer named Cliff Young walked up to the start line of a brand-new ultramarathon in his overalls and gumboots. He had taken his dentures out — they rattled when he ran. The other entrants were sponsored athletes a third his age. Young was 61.

The race ran 875 km from a Westfield mall in Parramatta, Sydney, to a Westfield in Doncaster, Melbourne. Conventional wisdom said you ran for about 18 hours and slept for six. Young either didn't know that or didn't care. After the first day he was a long way back, shuffling along in a strange low-knee gait that looked like it shouldn't go anywhere fast.

Then he kept going. He didn't stop to sleep that night, or the next. By the time the leaders woke at 2 am on the second morning, the farmer was in front. He stayed there.

Young crossed the line in Doncaster after 5 days, 15 hours, and 4 minutes. The next runner was about ten hours behind him. When organisers handed over the A$10,000 prize, Young said he hadn't known there was prize money and split most of it among the others — A$3,000 to the runner-up, Joe Record, and A$4,000 across the rest of the field, keeping A$3,000 for himself.

The shuffle stuck. At least three later winners of the Sydney-Melbourne race used what's now called the Young Shuffle, a stride that wastes almost no energy and lets you run while everyone else is trying to sleep.