Brian Robinson (cyclist)

Brian Robinson BEM (born 3 November 1930) is an English former road bicycle racer of the 1950s and early 1960s. He was the first Briton to finish the Tour de France and the first to win a Tour stage. He won the 1961 Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré stage race. His success as a professional cyclist in mainland Europe paved the way for other Britons such as Tom Simpson and Barry Hoban.

Brian Robinson
Robinson at the 1960 Tour de France
Personal information
Full nameBrian Robinson
Born (1930-11-03) 3 November 1930
Mirfield, West Riding of Yorkshire, England[1]
Team information
DisciplineRoad
RoleRider
Professional teams
1954Ellis Briggs
1954–1955Hercules
1956Meulenberg
1956La Perle–Coupry
1956Cilo–Saint-Raphaël
1957–1958Saint-Raphaël–R. Geminiani–Dunlop
1959Elswick Hopper
1959Saint-Raphaël–R. Geminiani–Dunlop
1960–1961Rapha–Gitane–Dunlop
1962Saint-Raphaël–Gitane–R. Geminiani
1963Peugeot–BP–Englebert
Major wins
Grand Tours
Tour de France
2 individual stages (1958, 1959)

Stage races

Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré (1961)

Early life and amateur career

Robinson grew up during the Second World War, which began when he was eight years old.

His family lived in Ravensthorpe and moved to Mirfield in 1943. Both his parents worked at a factory producing parts for Halifax bombers, Henry at night and Milly by day. The family had a small area of land, known as an allotment, where they kept rabbits and two pigs.[2] Robinson had a brother, Des, and a sister, Jean.

Early career

Robinson rode with the Huddersfield Road Club at 13 and joined when he reached the club's minimum age the following year. His elder brother, Des, and his father were already members. His father, however, would not let Robinson start racing until he was 18.[3] His first race was a hilly 25-mile time-trial in March, which he completed in 1h 14m 50s. His ambition was not to ride against the clock, but in massed road races. Opportunities were limited. Views on British road racing were polarised between the British League of Racing Cyclists, which wanted road racing on open roads, and the National Cyclists' Union, which feared police and public reaction and confined racing to closed circuits.

Robinson was an NCU member.[4] He worked for the family building business, training before and after work, and frequently raced on roads in Sutton Park, Birmingham, where races had to end by 9.30 am so the public could use the park.[3] In 1948 he went to Windsor to watch the Olympic Games road race in Windsor Great Park "little realising that four years later I would make the next Olympics in Helsinki".[3]

He was fifth in the NCU massed-start championship and third in the Road Time Trials Council (RTTC) hill-climb championship in 1950. The following year, he was equal 7th in the Isle of Man International, 10th in the NCU massed-start championship, and second in the RTTC hill-climb championship. In 1952 he was fourth in the NCU title race, won the hill-climb championship, and was fifth in the Isle of Man International.

International experience

In spring 1952 whilst doing his National Service Robinson rode the Route de France, amateur version of the Tour de France, in a joint NCU/Army team. He rode well and was fifth with three days to go, but poor days in the Pyrenees saw him slip to 40th. "I had never seen mountains like that before," he said.

The following August, he represented Great Britain at Helsinki in the Olympic Games road race. Robinson finished 27th, one place behind his brother, to André Noyelle of Belgium.[5] The future Tour de France winner, Jacques Anquetil, was 12th, and Robinson raced against him again in the world cycling championship in Italy in September 1952 where they tied for eighth.

Professional career

The new professional

In 1953, Robinson left the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and joined the Ellis Briggs team as an independent, or semi-professional. He rode the Tour of Britain in 1952, wearing the leader's yellow jersey before finishing fourth.

The following year, 1954, he improved to second, and second in the mountains competition.

The British cycle industry, fighting in a dwindling market, competed for sales by sponsoring riders. Hercules and BSA had supported long-distance record-breakers when there was no other professional racing on the road and now wanted to have road-racing teams.

Tour de France

Hercules planned a team that would be the first from Britain to ride the Tour de France, then based on national teams. The riders in its colours grew season by season until in 1955 it had Robinson, Bernard Pusey, Dennis Talbot, Freddy Krebs, Clive Parker, Ken Joy, Arthur Ilsley, Derek Buttle (the founder of the team) and Dave Bedwell.[3] The team raced in France, the Netherlands and Belgium in preparation. Robinson was 8th in Paris–Nice, fourth in La Flèche Wallonne and led the Tour of the Six Provinces to the sixth stage. The eventual Tour team was a mixture of Hercules riders and those from other sponsors.

The Tour de France proved tough and only Robinson and Tony Hoar finished, Robinson 29th and Hoar lanterne rouge or last.[6] They were the first Britons to finish the Tour, 18 years after Charles Holland and Bill Burl were the first Britons in the race in 1937.

Robinson told Jock Wadley of Sporting Cyclist that it was easy for an English professional to get into the Tour de France in 1955. "Indeed, when it came to selection time there were hardly enough riders available to fill the places." Hercules and other British sponsors dropped their sponsorship at the end of 1955. Robinson, who had married the previous October, set up at the start of 1956 at Les Issambres, the area of the French Riviera that Hercules had used for its training the previous year and which was close to the spring criteriums. He and another professional, Bernard Pusey, suffered because the first races were cancelled because of snow.

In 1956, the Tour allowed mixed teams. Robinson joined a squad which included Charly Gaul. He took third on the first stage, and by the end of the Tour was 14th, Gaul 13th. He also rode the Vuelta a España in Hugo Koblet's Swiss-British team, and was second after the fourth stage. He punctured on a climb on the 10th stage when in a break with Italy's Angelo Conterno, the race winner, but managed to recover from 11th to eighth.

Milan–San Remo

In 1957 he scored his first professional win, in the GP de la Ville de Nice, beating Louison Bobet by 50 seconds. Then he finished third in Milan–San Remo to Spain's Miguel Poblet, whose 29th birthday it was.[7] Cycling called it "by far the greatest achievement by a British roadman in a single-day race since the halcyon 19th-century days of George Pilkington Mills and the Bordeaux–Paris". There was commercial intrigue behind the result, however.

Robinson crashed on wet cobbles early in the 1957 Tour de France, injuring his left wrist. He recovered to finish 15th in the world championship won by Rik Van Steenbergen.

First Tour stage win

In 1958, Robinson won stage seven of the Tour de France, to Brest. Arigo Padovan crossed the line first, but was relegated to second for his tactics in a hot sprint. Robinson showed his victory was no fluke by winning the 20th stage (from Annecy to Chalon-sur-Saône) of the 1959 Tour by 20 minutes. Next day he paid the price, trailing far behind the field with his Irish teammate, Seamus Elliott, beside him.

Both finished outside the time limit and expected to be sent home. But the team's manager, Sauveur Ducazeaux, insisted the judges apply a rule that no rider in the first ten could be eliminated.[n 1] Robinson had started the day ninth: it was Elliott who was sent home. "The mother hen was cooked; the chick avoided the pot", Fotheringham said.

Robinson finished the Tour 19th, having at one time been ninth. That year he helped get his professional Rapha Geminiani team to sign Tom Simpson. Within weeks, he was watching Simpson win two stages of the Tour de l'Ouest.

Robinson finished 26th and 53rd in the Tours of 1960 and 1961. In between he won the 1961 Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré, winning two stages. He was part of the winning team in the team time-trial, then third in the individual time trial at Romans. He won the following day's stage at Villefranche. He kept control of the race as it passed through the mountains and won the race.

Retirement

Robinson retired when he was 33, not having made much money from cycling despite his successes.

The magazine Cycling placed Robinson ninth best British rider of the 20th century.[8]

Robinson, at 74, helped organise a dinner in August 2005 to mark the 50th anniversary of the first British competitors in the Tour de France. The event aimed to attract all British riders who have raced in the Tour since 1955.

In 2009, he was inducted into the British Cycling Hall of Fame.[9]

Robinson's daughter Louise became an accomplished cyclo-cross rider, taking a silver medal at the 2000 UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships.[10] Two of Brian's grandchildren are also competitive racing cyclists: Jake Womersley competing in cyclo-cross and road racing[11] and Becky Womersley in road racing.[12]

On 16 July 2014, Robinson was knocked off his bike in a collision with a car driver whilst riding through Thornhill Lees, suffering a fractured collar bone, six broken ribs, a punctured lung.[13]

Robinson was awarded the British Empire Medal in the 2017 New Year Honours for his services to charity and cycling.[14]

Career achievements

Major results

Source:[15][16]

1951
1st Overall Dublin–Galway–Dublin
1st Stage 1
1952
1st National Hill Climb Championship
1953
4th Overall Tour of Britain
5th Tour of Ireland
1954
1st Stage 6 Tour d'Europe
2nd Overall Tour of Britain
2nd Mountains classification
1955
1st Tour of Pennines
4th La Flèche Wallonne
8th Overall Paris–Nice
1956
8th Overall Vuelta a España
9th Critérium des As
1957
3rd Milan–San Remo
4th Overall Tour de Luxembourg
4th Overall Tour de l'Ouest
4th Overall Tour de Picardie
8th Overall Paris–Nice
10th Bordeaux–Paris
1958
1st Stage 7 Tour de France
5th Overall Tour du Sud-Est
1st Stage 5
1st Pursuit & Omnium, de Guecho (with Jacques Anquetil)
1st Mountains classification, Paris–Nice
5th Mont Faron Hill Climb
1959
1st Stage 20 Tour de France
3rd Manx Trophy
1960
1st Stage 3 Midi Libre
7th Overall Tour de l'Aude
1st Stage 2
1961
1st Overall Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré
1st Stage 2b (TTT)
1st Stage 3
2nd Overall Circuit d'Auvergne
1st Stage 2
8th Stage Midi Libre

Grand Tour general classification results timeline

Source:[16][17]

Grand Tour 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961
Vuelta a España — 8 — — DNF — —
Giro d'Italia — — — — — — —
Tour de France 29 14 DNF DNF 19 56 23
Legend
— Did not compete
DNF Did not finish

Awards and honours
gollark: My basements are much more "crazy mad scientist" than heav's base.
gollark: There are a few "sprinklers".
gollark: AS has a ritual for it I think.
gollark: It also blots out the sun, partly.
gollark: Heav thinks that rifts spawn on the highest available land, which seems right, so we think this should redirect rift spawns to an easy-to-clean area.

See also

Notes
  1. The rule was created in 1926 when a single rider, Lucien Buysse, eliminated the entire field. He finished so far ahead that everyone else was outside the limit. The organiser, Henri Desgrange, extended the day's limit to 40 per cent of the winner's time and ruled that nobody in the first 10 could be eliminated.

References
  1. Woodland 2007, p. 322.
  2. Fotheringham, William (2005), Roule Britannia, Yellow Jersey, UK
  3. Cycling, UK, 25 April 1992
  4. For more details of the civil war, see British League of Racing Cyclists
  5. "Brian Robinson Olympic Results". sports-reference.com. Archived from the original on 18 December 2012. Retrieved 29 December 2012.
  6. McGann & McGann 2006, p. 208.
  7. Cycling, UK, 28 March 1957, p239
  8. Cycle Sport, UK, June 2002
  9. "50 Cycling Heroes Named in British Cycling's Hall of Fame". British Cycling. 17 December 2009. Archived from the original on 20 December 2009.
  10. Cleverly, Ian. "Here's to you, Ms Robinson". Rouleur. Archived from the original on 19 April 2015. Retrieved 28 June 2014.
  11. Barrow, Pete (11 October 2012). "Huddersffield's cycling young guns: Part three – Leon Gledhill and Jake Womersley". Huddersfield Daily Examiner. Retrieved 28 June 2014.
  12. Himelfield, Dave (9 July 2015). "Huddersfield Criterium 2015: Top riders and teams praise race organisers for thrilling competition". Huddersfield Daily Examiner. Retrieved 30 July 2015.
  13. Sidwells, Chris (17 July 2014). "Brian Robinson recovering after collision with car". Cycling Weekly. Retrieved 30 December 2016.
  14. Himelfield, David (30 December 2016). "Cycling legend Brian Robinson receives British Empire Medal in New Year Honours". Huddersfield Daily Examiner. Retrieved 30 December 2016.
  15. "Brian Robinson". Cycling Archives. de Wielersite. Retrieved 27 June 2015.
  16. "Palmarès de Brian Robinson (Gbr)" [Awards of Brian Robinson (Gbr)]. Memoire du cyclisme (in French). Retrieved 25 June 2015.
  17. "Brian Robinson". The history of the Tour de France. Paris: ASO. Archived from the original on 16 July 2014. Retrieved 27 June 2015.

Bibliography

Further reading
Sporting positions
Preceded by
Jean Dotto		 Winner of Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré
1961		 Succeeded by
Raymond Mastrotto
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