Stuart's Story
Stuart O’Grady competed at every Olympic Games over a remarkable 20-year period from 1992 to 2012. He joins an elite club of six-time Australian Olympians and has an impressive four medals on his Olympic record.
Making his Olympic debut at Barcelona 1992, O’Grady, with Brett Aitken, Stephen McGlede and Shaun O’Brien, finished second in the team pursuit behind Germany to claim the silver medal.
At Atlanta 1996, O’Grady won a bronze medal in the points race, behind Martinello (ITA) and Walton (CAN), and another medal of the same hue with Aitken, Brad McGee and Dean Woods, behind France and Russia, in the team pursuit.
At Sydney 2000, O’Grady competed in the road and points races. At Athens 2004, he contested the road race and then teamed with Graeme Brown to repeat Aitken’s and Scott McGrory’s victory from Sydney in the Madison and claim Olympic gold.
O’Grady spent the 2008 Beijing Games and 2012 London Games striving for Australia’s first medal in the men’s road race but came up short. In 2012 he produced a brave and incredible ride as captain of the men’s team- spending nearly six hours in the saddle, setting the pace for the world’s best riders for almost the entire 250km, and then missing the gold medal by just eight seconds and the bronze medal by a couple of metres. A 39-year-old O’Grady finished sixth in what he described as “one of the rides of my life.”
Over his long career O’Grady has won many medals at World Championships, Commonwealth Games and in road races. He has been a stage winner and worn the coveted yellow jersey in the Tour de France where he is a four-time runner-up in the competition for the overall sprinter’s crown. Noted cycling commentator Phil Liggett has described him as one of the hardest competitors on the road racing circuit.
