Nineteen year old John Dinan impressively won the Bill Howard Handicap in 1979 & arrived at Stawell the following year favored to win the Gift which he did comfortably by a little over a metre, despite being nursed to the start with a suspect leg.
The following year he won the Backmarkers Invitation Handicap from scratch & in later years twice ran second in that event.
Both John Dinan & Chris Perry made tremendous contributions to professional footrunning when they took on the amateurs to become the first professional runners to be selected to represent their country at the Commonwealth Games, at Edinburgh in 1986.