2025 AGM Photos - Melbourne Marathon Spartans

2025 Annual General Meeting

More than 200 Spartans and guests enjoyed the 2025 Annual General Meeting. Minutes of the meeting, and all reports are here.

Hamish Blair (S1423) photographed all presentations. If you would like high resolution copies of the images, Hamish has generously made them available here (or send an email to djfoskey@ozemail.com.au). And, if you want to see what’s in Hamish’s portfolio view www.hamishblair.com.au.

President Jay Fleming opening the meeting.

In 2007, there were 13 Spartans who had run all 30 Melbourne Marathons. Several attended the AGM: Pete Battrick (37 MMs in total), Bruce “Digger” Hargreaves (43), Nev Gardner (41), David Foskey (46), Wayne Thompson (46), Roger Weinstein (43), Peter Ryan (37), John Dobson (46). John Dean (33) was present but missed the photo.

Pete Battrick is pictured presenting Andrea Lung with the Shirley Young trophy for fastest female Spartan. Andrea’s time was 3:14:09.

This page covers Shirley Young’s history as a runner.

Dion Finocchiaro was unable to be present to receive the Jack Gubbins trophy for fastest male. Dion’s time was 2:23:44.

Read more about Jack Gubbins here.

Peter Ryan speaking before the presentation of the Hall of Fame certificate.

Mark Foley receiving his Hall of Fame certificate from Peter Ryan. Ian Twite was not present to receive his certificate.

John Kaparelis was nominated for Life Membership of the club by the Committee. David Foskey summarised John’s 11 years of committee membership and listed some of his achievements over that time. The meeting endorsed the nomination.

The photo shows David attempting to pin the life member badge to John’s T-shirt.

Spartan SW1, Ian Gainey was our guest speaker.

Ian delivered a wide ranging talk, beginning with discussions of the intricacies of the human foot, progressing to an overview of his life and sporting career. He developed polio as a child, four years before the introduction of vaccines. Ian participated in a number of sports but found success in wheelchair distance events. He represented Australia at in a range of events, including paralympics. In 1986 he set a world record for 10,000 metres.