I was gutted when I heard about Stuart O’Grady’s drugs confession. In many ways, it is harder to take than the Lance Armstrong revelations.
Over the last couple of years, as Stuart O’Grady made the final transition of his incredibly versatile career, I formed the view that he was one of Australia’s greatest contemporary sportsmen.
In fact, it is a wonder I never found time to write a Roar article to that effect.
This was a guy who fluctuated from the track to the road with equal success.
He had won gold on the track at the Olympics, won one of the world’s great road classics in Paris-Roubaix, and worn the yellow jersey in the Tour de France.
This ability to succeed in his sport in a variety of disciplines informed my view that he deserved recognition as one of our finest sporting products.
O’Grady was not a Hollywood story, and that was a primary reason I admired him.
He was just a bloke who had crafted a career for himself in one the world’s most taxing sports, simply through hard work and plenty of character.
He had been a sprinter when his body allowed it, but evolved over time into a stoic team man.
He would grit and grind his way up mountains in service of a team leader, often taking a greater workload than common sense would allow. He just ploughed on.
I think I had a bit of a sentimental connection to O’Grady too, because he was the first Australian I ever saw in the yellow jersey.
There is something striking about an Australian in that jersey, it represents the Australian capacity to tame an unfamiliar environment and beat others at their own game.
I was only six the first time O’Grady wore it, and at time I greeted it with a naive mix of pride and confusion.
My confusion arose when news reports said that even though he was in the lead, he wouldn’t be in the Tour. I figured they either had insufficient faith, or O’Grady was a bottler.
Though I scarcely understood the nuances of cycling and the Tour, I did appreciate the enormity of O’Grady’s achievement.
He was only the second Australian to feel those golden threads across his shoulders, and he did it twice.
Trailblazers like Stuart O’Grady, and Phil Anderson before him, made yellow slightly less foreign for future Australian contenders.
Lance Armstrong’s story was an unbelievable fairytale, which even the staunchest Armstrong supporter must have doubted on occasion.
However Stuart O’Grady’s path to the top of world cycling was so ordinary, so grounded in reality, that only the most extreme cynic would have doubted his legitimacy.
We looked at Armstrong and assumed he must be some sort of freak. When we look at O’Grady by contrast, we saw a bloke far more limited in natural ability, but who had drained that talent to the last drop through sheer force of will and dedication.
Perhaps, many of us drew hope from O’Grady’s rise for ourselves.
That’s why the revelations of the last few days have knocked me about. If we can’t have faith in Stuart O’Grady’s legitimacy, then what can we believe in?
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