Derek Turnbull

Derek Turnbull was a down to earth Southland sheep farmer who became a world legend of masters running. From 1977 to 1997, he rewrote the book, with 25 world records across five age-groups. At the biennial World Masters Athletics (WMA) Championships, he won 28 titles in all, often in world records, from 800m up, and on three occasions won six gold medals at the same Games, including cross-country and marathon, extraordinary in range and recovery.

In 1992, Turnbull broke the world 60-64 records at every distance from 800m to marathon. Five of his 65-69 world records (one mile to marathon) still stand, three decades later. One of those is his 2:41:57 marathon at age 66, which was a media highlight of that year’s London Marathon, and is featured in the documentary film, The Fastest Old Man in the World (available on You Tube). Turnbull himself considered his greatest race to be his 2:38:47 marathon in Adelaide in 1987, when he was the first over-60 to break 2:40. His favourite distance was always the 1500m.

WMA Championships should not be underestimated. They are the biggest adult track meets in the world, with typically four to six thousand  competitors, from more than seventy countries, and fifty to a hundred in each age-group in each distance race, most of them seriously trained. Comparing masters with open elite standards, Al Sheahan (USA), the senior statistician of age-group performances, said, “All Turnbull’s records are at or close to 100% in the age-graded scales. That means his performances are the equal of Herb Elliott, Carl Lewis, Al Oerter, etc.”  

The laconic farmer first emerged from his beloved 105 hectares of rolling sheep paddocks at Sherwood Farm, Tussock Creek, in 1977, when he won New Zealand’s first-ever gold medal at a WMA Championships, the 50-54 1500m in Gothenburg, Sweden. Born 5 December 1926 in Waikaka, into a family of Southland farmers, Turnbull was a devoted runner from his first year at Southland Boys’ High School in 1939. His wife Pat liked to recall that in their courting days, “after we had been to a dance or the pictures, he would put on his running shoes and run home, and I would drive and meet him for a sweaty goodnight cuddle.”

“I wasn’t any good when I was younger,” Turnbull always modestly said, although he was good enough at Massey Agricultural College (now University), to earn New Zealand University blues for athletics and cross-country, and to place fourth in New Zealand three-mile and six-mile championships. On the grass tracks of those days, he had a best 880yd just outside two minutes, and a mile of 4:23.

His secret was that he scarcely slowed down. At 62, he could still run 2:14 for 800m, and at 71 it was 2:28.6. At 65, his mile world record was 4:56.  At 71, he ran 18:34.00 for 5000m, 39:43 for 10,000m, and 3:15:00 for the marathon, winning those WMA titles in Durban in 1997.

Farming is full time, and he had plenty of family commitments, as Pat produced first a girl, then triplets, then twins. They became locally famous for competing as a family relay team. The multi-talented Pat was a highly efficient manager of Derek and his travels as well as the home, family, and contributions to the community. They were active in local charities, especially in  support of children and conservation, and hosted church services at Sherwood Farm. They had to endure grievous loss when Kenneth, one of the triplets, was lost at sea in 1985. 

Turnbull first tried the marathon in 1955, helping a friend who wanted to revive New Zealand’s original marathon, the Riverton to Invercargill. Turnbull, age 29, was the only competitor, but ran 2:43. He finally beat that at age 61, with his historic 2:38:47. At 63, he was still running well enough to do 2:40:38 on the tough Rotorua course. At 64, he set a definitive New York City Marathon over-60 record of 2:41:21. It was in the elite tent before that race that a senior representative of Nike visibly blanched when he saw the mud-stained beaten-up old shoes that Derek habitually raced in. 

Turnbull was also a superlative cross-country and trail runner, doing all his running (he refused to call it “training”) around and near the farm. On a Sunday he was fond of running three or four hours with his local mates in the bush, or sometimes the entire Milford Track. He was a regular in the 60km Kepler Challenge, and became literally an icon when the race put his image on the medals in 1992. He won three WMA Championship gold medals for cross-country, but he didn’t often feature in the New Zealand Championship because it clashed with lambing. “Running is part of my life, same as farming,” he said. Known locally as “the Squire,” Turnbull was dismissive of coaches, watches, and schedules, and he kept his running natural and enjoyable. “I don’t know about this aerobic business. I just run – when I feel, where I feel, how I feel.”

That running by feel gave him nevertheless a perfectly balanced programme of long runs, tempo, hills, varied surfaces, and fast work. “Feel like rattlin’ yer dags to that fenceline?” he would say casually, and take off across the roots and hillocks, lengthening his flexuous stride to sub-70 second 400 pace. To see Turnbull in his battered check shirt, driving his even more battered truck ahead of a work gang of yelping border collies, forking hay, manhandling ewes, fixing fences, or milking Gladys, was to understand that when he went loping off into the hills, that other life as a globally famous runner also grew at some deep level out of those green pastures.

“My only ambition is to improve this land, and leave it in better heart than when I took it over,” he said.

In his later years, he diversified and became a formidable competitor in cycling and duathlon. “Not triathlons, because I swim like a brick. As you get older, you look for variety and enjoyment,” he said.

He increased his commitment to environmental activism, and he and Pat gifted 35 hectares of indigenous forest on their land as Turnbull’s Bush, a permanently protected conservation area, now open to the public. They were given the Environment Southland Community Achievers Award.

After his death (at 79, 2 November 2006), the Department of Conservation renamed a bush-track, “in honour of world-renown, home-grown athlete Derek Turnbull, a passionate environmentalist who used Forest Hill as a training ground.”

Pat Turnbull also donated the “Derek Turnbull Walkway,” a permanent exhibition of her Turnbull Collection of photographs and memorabilia within Stadium Southland in Invercargill.

Turnbull received the QSM in 1988. In 1991, the American Runner’s Worldmagazine, at its 25^th anniversary gala, honoured him as the World Male Masters Runner of the quarter-century. On the way, he was guest speaker at an evening promoting New Zealand at the Embassy in Washington DC. His life is documented in the book, The Fastest Old Man in the World, by Vince Boyle (2006). 

Written by Roger Robinson