KEY POINTS:
Derek Turnbull, QSM, athlete, farmer. Died aged 79
Derek Turnbull, a Southland farmer was the subject of a book called The Fastest Old Man in the World. This veteran of veteran athletics held age group world records for the 800m, 1500m, 10,000m, cross-country and the marathon.
But running was always "just a hobby" for Turnbull, who started athletics at Southland Boys High School. He was in his own words "well down the track" in New Zealand open athletics.
But it was as he got older that Derek Turnbull discovered he had a priceless asset. In the slightly curious world of veteran athletics things are somewhat different from normal competition in which people competing at a youthful peak of their powers are beaten for first place by the fastest runner.
In veteran athletics it is nearer the truth that you win because you run less slowly than others in your age group. And Turnbull, who started "masters" running at 40, was able to observe in 1987 - after he had won his fourth gold medal at the World Veteran Games in Melbourne - that "I'm not much slower now than I was 30 years ago".
He had not, he added then, had time to get down to serious training because he was too busy on his Tussock Creek beef and sheep farm. In any case, there was "no system to my training - I do it when I feel like it, or when the opportunity arises. There is no coach and no special diet. But I keep pretty fit on the farm."
Sometimes he would go out for a jog with friends. At other times he used to fit in a run between farm tasks.
At the World Veteran Athletics Championships in Eugene, Oregon, in 1989 he gained a haul of six gold medals but was pipped for gold in the 5000m by an Italian athlete.
"I just blew it in the 5000," he told the Herald afterwards. "I think I drank too much beer the night before."
By the 1997 championships in Durban, South Africa, by which time he must have, at the age of 71, outdistanced many of his age group in staying power, he won six gold medals.
After high school, Turnbull's early life involved getting a Diploma of Agriculture at Massey University (with honours) before going overseas on his "OE" - first in Australia on a motorbike, then working on an experimental farm in England. After that he toured Europe and the United States on a bicycle, pedalling across America from one coast to the other. Then it was back to Southland and farming, eventually at Tussock Creek, which Turnbull and his wife Pat's website describes as "a tiny farming community at the bottom of the world".
The New Zealand farmer had claimed 25 world age group records, was awarded the Queen's Service Medal for his services to athletics.
Derek Turnbull is survived by his wife and children.
