Stuart O’Grady not hiding from the past that has shaped his future after securing TDU director’s role
Stuart O’Grady stopped hiding from his past in 2013 and set about rebuilding his reputation and place in cycling. It led to Tuesday’s announcement that he will succeed Mike Turtur as race director of the Tour Down Under.
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Stuart O’Grady cannot hide from his past, but nor does he want to.
As proud as he is of his Olympic gold medal and Paris-Roubaix trophy, he is as ashamed of his doping indiscretion in 1998 when he won a stage and wore the yellow jersey in the Tour de France.
You cannot celebrate one part of his career without acknowledging the other and it might have taken almost 15 years, but O’Grady reached that point in 2013.
And the past six years have been about the future - rebuilding his reputation and his place in cycling.
Sport is a very forgiving industry.
It has a long memory which is matched only by the long list of second chances it is prepared to offer its heroes.
O’Grady knows this better than most.
Almost everything he has done since coming clean about his dark secret has been building towards Tuesday’s announcement that he will succeed Mike Turtur as race director of the Tour Down Under.
He started a cycling and cafe business in Adelaide, has been race director of the Revolve 24-hour event at Tailem Bend and spent time in official cars at the TDU and Herald Sun Tour in Melbourne.
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Anything he did not know about cycling after a 20-year career on the bike he has added to his repertoire, which was celebrated by the State Government and Events SA on Tuesday.
The elephant in the room at the press conference was his doping confession and whether that would overshadow the most important job in the state’s biggest sporting and tourism event on the calendar.
But when it comes to professional cycling you cannot have a rule for one, and one for others.
It’s either a blanket ban for dopers, or not.
If you say O’Grady should not be responsible for running the Tour Down Under then you cannot allow Matt White - as hugely successful as he is - to be running Australia’s WorldTour team Mitchelton-Scott as its team director after he confessed to doping during his career.
The difference in this instance is the Tour Down Under is owned and run by the State Government and O’Grady’s wage will be paid by the taxpayer, and that would have no doubt been roundly debated during the recruitment process.
To ignore O’Grady’s past would be wrong, but to ignore what he and the likes of White can offer the sport now - two decades after they made the biggest mistakes of their sporting careers and possibly their lives - would be to deny cycling into the future.
O’Grady’s intimate knowledge of the sport, the South Australian roads, his connection to the professional peloton and passion for the race clearly made him a very enticing candidate to replace Turtur who it should be noted had a big say in who he trusted to continue the legacy he started in 1999.
That person was O’Grady, warts and all.