Shay Elliott

Seamus "Shay" Elliott (4 June 1934 – 4 May 1971) was an Irish road bicycle racer, Ireland's first major international rider, with a record comparable only to Sean Kelly and Stephen Roche.

He was the first Irish person to ride the Tour de France, first to win a stage, and first to wear the yellow jersey, and first English speaker to win stages in all the Grand Tours.

After a strong amateur period, primarily with the Dublin Wheelers, Elliott was the first Irish cyclist to make a mark as a professional rider in continental Europe.

A late-starting but naturally talented rider, he spent most of his pro career riding as a domestique for team leaders such as Jacques Anquetil, and Anquetil's deputy Jean Stablinski.

The club broke up soon afterwards and Elliott joined the Dublin Wheelers, one of the most active clubs at that time, in March 1952.

That summer he won the Mannin Veg, a race over one lap of the TT motorcycling circuit on the Isle of Man.

He also won the Dublin-Galway-Dublin two-day race, winning the race back to Dublin in a sprint.

In 1953 he rode the Manx International, over three laps of the TT circuit, for the Ireland "B" team.

He fell on the tricky turn at Governor's Bridge, shortly before the finish, but came fourth.

He won the 1953 Irish amateur road championship.

His King of the Mountains placing in the Tour of Ireland in 1954 earned him a trip to the Simplex training camp in Monte Carlo the following spring.

Jock Wadley said of him in Sporting Cyclist:"I can not remember all the items in Shay's luggage, of course. But I can hardly forget that one whole compartment in the chest of drawers was devoted to provisions which Shay had brought from Ireland, the chief stock being 2lb [1kg] of tea and 2lb of chocolate creams. I was invited to eat as many of the chocolates as I liked, because his aunt who worked in the place where they were made would soon be sending more."

He said that Elliott was one of several riders asked to strip for examination by the soigneur Raymond Le Bert, who normally worked for Louison Bobet.

Wadley wrote:"It would be wrong to say that the company laughed when Shay stood there in his underpants, but there were certainly some smiles because in contrast to his lithe, clean-limbed predecessors at the examination, Shay looked a short, fat boy. Le Bert, however, did not smile. Immediately he exclaimed: 'Ah ha, now this is really rock. He is a real flahute. (Flahute is a favourite French way of describing the old-type tough Flemish roadman.)"

Leulliot remembered how Elliott had won the Tourmalet stage of the 1954 Route de France, which Leulliot's paper, Route et Piste, organised.

Leulliot asked in his paper for someone to accommodate Elliott in the capital and added "The Irishman is soaked with class and has a great future before him."

The appeal was answered by Paul Wiegant of the Athletic Club Boulogne-Billancourt (ACBB) in Paris, France's top amateur team.

Elliott did not return permanently to Ireland at the end of the training camp in early 1955.

He had just finished six years as an apprentice sheet-metal worker and he and his family in Old County Road in Crumlin, had decided that he had mastered panel-beating and would have a trade to return to if his efforts to become a professional cyclist failed.

He contacted a former French professional, Francis Pélissier, for advice.

Pélissier told Elliott to compete in as many races as possible, at least three or four a week – possibly in France, but not in Ireland, a cycling backwater.

Elliott planned to move to Ghent in Belgium, where he could race several times a week and, as an amateur, win money denied to him in Ireland.

At the training camp, however, he met the journalist and race organiser Jean Leulliot, who told him he would burn himself out in round-the-houses racing and urged him to move to Paris.

Elliott won five one-day amateur classics in 1955 and set the world 10 km amateur record on the Vélodrome d'Hiver in Paris.

He was the first foreigner to be ranked top amateur in France.

Elliott turned professional for the 1956 season.

Elliott signed as a professional for the Helyett-Félix Potin team (Helyett was a bicycle manufacturerer).

He won his first race, the GP d'Echo Alger in Algeria, outsprinting André Darrigade.

He also won the GP Catox and the GP Isbergues.

In his first major race of 1957, the Omloop "Het Volk" in Belgium, he made a race-long break with Englishman Brian Robinson.

He came 2nd (to Stablinski) in the 1962 World Road Championship at Salò, Italy.

Aside from being the first English-speaker to lead the Tour de France, wearing the yellow jersey for three days, Elliott was first English-speaker to lead the Vuelta a España, in which he came third in 1962 and was the only English-speaker to win the Omloop "Het Volk" semi-classic until 2014 when Ian Stannard won the race.

He died in unclear circumstances at the age of 36.

Elliott was from the working class area of Crumlin in Dublin, the eldest son of James Elliott, a motorbike mechanic, and Ellen, always known as Nell.

He played Gaelic football and hurling and didn't learn to ride a bicycle until he was 14.

He used it to ride to the town of Naas.

He joined a small cycling club, St Brendan's, attached to St Brendan's Catholic Church, Coolock, when he was 16 and took part in races of about 20 miles that the church organised around the city streets.

He came second in his first race, riding a "scrap" bike with a single fixed wheel that led his pedals to bang the road on corners.

The winner had a specialised racing bike.

Elliott joined the Southern Road Club when he was 17 and, on a racing bike, won the Grand Prix of Ireland run over 50 km in the Phoenix Park.