1981 Cliff Young, 61 years old, wearing overalls and work boots, showed up at the start of this race. He picked up his race number and joined the other runners. The press and other athletes became curious and questioned Cliff to which he replied, "See, I grew up on a farm where we couldn't afford horses or tractors, and the whole time I was growing up, whenever the storms would roll in, I'd have to go out and round up the sheep. We had 2,000 sheep on 2,000 acres. Sometimes I would have to run those sheep for two or three days. "

When the race started, the pros quickly left Cliff behind but the television crew kept the audience entertained because Cliff didn't even run properly; he appeared to shuffle. Some commentators expressed their concern for the old farmer's safety. Used to take about 5 days to finish the race. What the pros did were to run about 18 hours a day and sleep the remaining 6 hours. The thing is, Cliff Young didn't know that!

When the morning of the second day came, everyone was in for another surprise. Not only was Cliff still in the race, he had continued jogging all night. To everyone's disbelief, Cliff kept running without sleeping Each night he increased his lead and by the final night, he had surpassed all of the young, world-class athletes; the firs, to cross the finish line and a new course record.

When Cliff was awarded the winning prize of $10,000, he said he didn't know there was a prize and insisted that he did not enter for the money.
He ended up giving all of his winnings to several other runners, an act that endeared him to all of Australia.

The doctors once told me I had arthritis in my joints and to take it easy, so I said ‘I’ll fix that up, I’ll run it out.’ So I kept running and it disappeared,” Young told an interviewer about exercising as he aged. “It is like rust that gets into a vehicle. Well, I think it was like rust in me. I reckon you have to keep your joints moving. Absolutely. No matter what you do, you have to keep moving. If you don’t wear out, you rust out, and you rust out quicker than you wear out.