Mitch Palmer finishes second in the 550m event at Stawell Gift carnival

“He started second from the front and his plan was to run with the guy, Aaron Downes, who was just in front of him, but he ran past him because he didn’t think he was doing the pace he needed to,” trainer Adrian Fury said.

“Mitch set the pace all the way around and Shane Woodrow, who was the favourite and was very impressive a couple of weeks ago at Euroa, ran him down in the last 20 (metres) and won by about two.”

Palmer has shown wonderful versatility, claiming the 70m at Wangaratta in late January, the 400m at Maryborough and the 550m at Frankston.

The former Lavington footballer had dabbled with the gruelling 800m event last year, but has focused more on the equalling challenging 550.

“You need to run at a steady pace, we worked out you have to run your 100m in 14½ seconds, so a lot of the training we do is aimed towards that,” Fury said.

“When it comes to the 550, you can’t sprint too early otherwise you burn up your energy too quickly.”

Meanwhile, Wangaratta’s Anna Pasquali finished fourth in the women’s 400m final and women’s 120m Gift.

”At 39, with a body that’s got a few injury woes, I was pretty happy with fourth and fourth,” she said.

Pasquali ran off 27m in the first event and then had to back up around 30 minutes later for the sprint, which has only been done a handful of times in the carnival’s long history.