Doug Tuhan is a hard man to catch.
The 76-year-old is always on the go; he is either playing bowls, milking cows, running or walking.
A legend in the Goulburn Valley, Tuhan is known as the unofficial Mayor of Murchison and has been a mainstay in professional athletics for more than 50 years.
With a running career that started at Kyabram as a 23-year-old and finished in the Stawell Gift Hall of Fame, Tuhan is considered an all-time great of the sport.
With the revived Shepparton Gift only days away, Tuhan reflected on a fantastic athletics career.
“I love running and the competition,” he said.
“Professional athletics has been part of my life for such a long time. I travelled everywhere to run and I really enjoyed it.
“It all started when I was a young bloke and I would get bored on the farm at Kyabram. When I had some down time, I just started running. It was my brother who suggested I put the running to good use and look to get myself trained. I was ordinary at other sports, so I decided to have a go at running and it’s been a lifelong passion since.”
With 21 professional track wins and three professional cross-country wins, Tuhan could be considered one of the most successful athletes in the sport.
Out of all his wins he considers his four wins at the famous Stawell Gift carnival as some of his favourite memories.
“The Stawell Gift meeting is the pinnacle for pro runners and I was very lucky to win two 1600m races, as well as the 3200m and a 1500m veterans handicap,” he said.
He was made a Stawell Gift Hall of Fame member in 2006, the same year as Cathy Freeman.
“It’s tough to win a race at Stawell and I was very lucky to have a great trainer in my corner. Ray McCreerey was my coach and he was a big help to me. We trained really hard. I am not sure they train that hard these days,” he said.
After buying a dairy farm at Murchison, Tuhan and his wife Marg started the Murchison 10km race in the Victorian Cross Country League.
“It ended up going for 40 years. We used to get busloads of people to Murch to run and have a good day,” he said.
His son Michael continued the family running tradition, winning about 20 professional races Tuhan guesses.
“I loved watching Michael run. It was great to have family involved and that’s what’s good about this sport, it allows families to compete together.”
Tuhan has also seen the decline in the sport over the years and recalls a time when hundreds of runners would run in the one event.
“I remember the days when there were so many entries in a mile event that they would have three different sections of the same race. There would be the backmarkers, middlemarkers and frontmarkers. Each was a separate race with about 40 people in each race. These days they have to battle to get 20 runners into one single race.”
The easy going Tuhan laughs at some of the characters and stories that emerged out of the sport.
“I have seen some funny things on the pro running circuit over the years,” he said.
“There was one race where one of the runners I was up against, and I won’t name him, walked up to his mark and put his tracksuit top over the mark. When the stewards weren’t looking he then picked up the mark under his tracksuit top and walked forward 20m and put it down again.
“He ran 20m less than he should of, but I wasn’t about to say anything.”
There was once a time when professional athletics was a way of life in country Victoria and it wasn’t just in Shepparton.
Regional country football ovals were transformed into athletic tracks and towns came alive.
Lured by exciting races, dramatic finishes and money, thousands packed into race meetings in towns like Wangaratta, Bendigo, Ballarat and even smaller towns like Yarroweyah.
Betting was big and the sport flourished. It was a good earner for runners and punters alike.
Uniquely called ‘‘pedestrianism’’, most recognise professional athletics via the Stawell Gift. First run in 1878 the Stawell Gift is televised each Easter and is the most famous of the professional races.
It is said that the Gift distance of 130 yards, or 120m, originated in Sheffield, England.
It was the distance between two local pubs.
To find the start of professional athletics in Australia, you need to go back to the 1800s and the Victorian goldfields.
Looking to break the boredom of searching for gold seven days a week, men raced each other for prizes of money, livestock and gold nuggets.
Four winners of the Stawell Gift have hailed from the Goulburn Valley.
Nagambie’s Tommy Deane won in 1946, Noel Hussey in 1964, Katamatite’s Glen Crawford cruised to victory in 1995 and Yorta Yorta man Lynch Cooper breasted the tape in 1928.
Cooper is an interesting story.
Born at Moira, it’s believed he got odds of 60/1 on himself before the race. It was reported that he bet his entire life savings. In addition to the 250 pounds he received for the win, it was said that he took more than 3000 pounds from the bookies.
A fortune in those days.
Tuhan is pleased that the Shepparton Gift is being brought back to life in 2023 and hopes it will be the start of a resurgence in professional running in the Goulburn Valley.
“It’s great for the town. The history of pro running in this area is significant and the sport meant a lot to regional country towns,” Tuhan said.