Jean Robic

Jean Robic (; 10 June 1921 – 6 October 1980)L'Équipe, 9 July 2003 was a French road racing cyclist, who won the 1947 Tour de France. Robic was a professional cyclist from 1943 to 1961. His diminutive stature (1.61m, 60 kg) and appearance was encapsulated in his nickname ''Biquet'' ''(Kid goat)''. For faster, gravity-assisted descents, he collected drinking bottles ballasted with lead or mercury at the summits of mountain climbs and " cols". After fracturing his skull in 1944 he always wore a trademark leather crash helmet.

Origins

Robic has always been described as a Breton but he was born in the Ardennes region of France, where his father had found work as a carpenter."Club cyclo du Ninian à Plémet"

his father having lived in Brittany before he moved. His father was a racing cyclist and passed the interest to his son. Robic moved to Brittany when he was seven and lived at Radenac. His childhood home is in a street now named for him.

Robic moved to Paris In February 1940 and became a cycle mechanic for the Sausin company. He started racing but made a poor impression on journalists. René de Latour of Sporting Cyclist wrote:

If anybody had told you or me in 1939 that this skinny kid of 17, with ears large enough to be of help with a back wind blowing—if we had been told that here was a future winner of the Tour de France, we would just have laughed. When his name first became known to journalists, he quickly became known as ''le farfadet de la lande bretonne''—the hobgoblin of the Brittany moor. His arrival in the Paris area was not sensational. Robic won a few races out in the villages but this did not mean much. We had hundreds of boys like him in France.Sporting Cyclist, UK, January 1968

Early career

The outbreak of war in 1939 and then the German invasion of 1940 made cycle-racing possible but difficult in France. Robic rode cyclo-cross races and as many of the big road races that were still run. He turned professional in 1943. The following year he fell in Paris–Roubaix and finished the race with a broken skull. It was then that he started wearing the leather crash helmet for which he became known. The helmet won him the nickname of ''tête de cuir'', or leather-head; his short stature also brought him the nickname "Biquet", or "kid goat".

Tour de France

The Tour de France restarted after the war and Robic — still largely unknown — was selected for the regional team from north-west France, which meant largely from Brittany. "He was hardly interviewed by journalists; his retirement on the first day would not have earned him more than a line in small type at the bottom of an obscure page of the papers", said de Latour. Robic, recently married, told his wife Raymonde he would bring her the Tour's yellow jersey as a wedding present.

The first stage, from Paris to Lille was won by Ferdinand Kübler of Switzerland. Robic came ninth at 2m 9s. Robic won the stage on the fourth day, from Luxembourg to Strasbourg, then rode well through the Alps. René de Latour said:

And yet the journalists—I among them—still didn't think Robic a Tour winner. We thought so more than ever when, the next day, the route included the great Galibier, and Robic was out of the picture, with the Franco-Italian Camellini unapproachable up there in the snows. It seemed that Robic could not ride well two days running—and consistency is the biggest quality needed in the Tour.

The Tour then had easy stages along the Mediterranean where he could recover before riding still more strongly in the Pyrenees, leading the race over the Aubisque, Tourmalet and Peyresourde on the day from Luchon to Pau. The time he gained moved him to fifth place, and the 139 km time trial to third.

It was on the last day, from Caen

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