Stuart O'Grady named in 2019 to take over from Mike Turtur as director of the Tour Down Under event
Stuart O’Grady winning stage 5 of the 1999 Tour Down Under.
Image courtesy cyclingtips.com.au
Stuart O’Grady was named in 2019 as the second director of Tour Down Under world cycling event, taking over fellow South Australian Mike Turtur, who had guided the race from its start in 1999.
O’Grady, a professional racer of 19 years including two Tour Down Under wins in 1999 and 2001, retired within days of completing his 17th Tour de France and admitting he'd once taken part in doping practices prevalent in the sport during the 1990s.
His appointment as Tour Down Under director was hailed by South Australia’s trade, tourism and investment minister David Ridgway and by Turtur who believed O’Grady’s “terrific experience, networks and relationships globally” would bring new opportunities to the race and South Australia. Main voices among muted Adelaide dissent came from Michael McGuire in The Advertiser and InDaily editor David Washington.
O’Grady started his competitive career as a track cyclist and was 18 when he won silver in the team pursuit at the Barcelona Olympics. He was part of the squad that triumphed in the same event in the 1993 and 1995 world championships. He scored two bronze medals at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 and became an Olympic gold medallist in Athens in 2004 as one half of the combination that won the madison.
O’Grady also had branched into road racing, competing in his first Tour de France in 1998 and wearing the yellow jersey for three stages. Among numerous other achievements, in 2007, he became the first Australian to win a European one day classic when he took out the race – “the hell of the north” – the 260-kilometre Paris to Roubaix.
O’Grady also is honoured in South Australia by a bikeway that runs parallel to the Northern Expressway. The northern trailhead of the Stuart O’Grady Bikeway is on the corner of Two Wells Road and Weaver Road, Gawler. The southern trailhead is at the end of a cul-de-sac parallel to Port Wakefield Road, near Calvengrove Road, Waterloo Corner, to connect with a 16-kilometre shared path that’s part of the Northern Connector to the Port Expressway.
