Tour Down Under to honour race director Mike Turtur’s right-hand man Terry Roberts with KOM trophy
WHEN Mike Turtur starts the 20th edition of the Tour Down Under on Sunday night it will be with a heavy heart as he remembers his right-hand man Terry Roberts who died last year.
Tour Down Under
Don't miss out on the headlines from Tour Down Under. Followed categories will be added to My News.
WHEN Mike Turtur starts the 20th edition of the Tour Down Under on Sunday night it will be with a heavy heart as he remembers his right-hand man Terry Roberts who died last year.
The pair worked side-by-side on all 19 editions of the race since its inception in 1999, and Turtur is not too proud to admit he’s shed a few tears this week.
“The last month really,” he said.
“I’ve been doing things that Terry and I would normally do together and it’s a constant reminder that he’s not here.
“Like the barbecue in the village where all the staff get together before the first team comes, we would always cook the barbecue together.
“We had a 20-year working association and he was a good friend.
“I never heard him raise his voice, get mad or angry. He was the complete opposite to me. I used to go off my brain and he was cool and calm.”
Turtur’s first contact with Roberts was in the early 1990s when he organised a city criterium and needed Roberts - who was a senior sergeant with SA Police - to co-ordinate road closures.
So by 1998 when Turtur was preparing a stage race to be called the Tour Down Under, the first person he called was Roberts to take care of traffic logistics.
In the early years of the TDU Roberts was seconded by the race organisation to work for six months a year in logistics, and when he retired from the police force he was employed by Events SA and then worked as a contractor in the same role.
Turtur said they shared plenty of moments that weren’t funny at the time but now he could smile at - like emus on the loose, wet concrete and crushed olives on the road and rogue motorists but a runaway horse near Woodside takes the cake.
“Terry was in the car ahead of me with the police and he would contact me with a radio by saying ‘Mike, stand by’, and when he said that I knew something was up,” Turtur said.
“It would drive me mad because I had to wait for the information even though I knew it was coming.
“This day coming into Woodside he said ‘listen we have a bit of a problem here, there’s a horse on the loose’.
“I said ‘where is it?’ and he said ‘coming straight for us in a full gallop’.
“As I looked up it went past him, a yearling with eyes like this, and it took the mirror off the cop’s bike in front of me.
“At that point I did the sign of the cross because the peloton was all over the road and somehow it ran down the side of the verge and missed them.”
Roberts helped Turtur design this year’s course with the intention that it would be his last before he hooked up the caravan with his wife and travelled around the country.
But in May he was diagnosed with cancer and he died on July 2, Turtur’s birthday, aged 70.
To honour Roberts’ contribution to the TDU, a special award will be presented to the winner of the king of the mountain at Penny’s Hill on Stage 3.
Roberts championed Penny’s Hill as a KOM climb and the award will be the ‘Terry Roberts Trophy’.
Originally published as Tour Down Under to honour race director Mike Turtur’s right-hand man Terry Roberts with KOM trophy