Today I found out that the first British cyclist to win a Tour de France was not Bradley Wiggins in 2012.
Millie Robinson won the first women’s Tour de France, in 1955. A few years later she set a new hour record. For a brief period, Robinson was the rider to beat, both at home and abroad.
The Tour Féminin Cycliste was created by Jean Leulliot, who ran Paris-Nice amongst other races. It was actually more of a Tour of Normandy and was five stages long. A few months previously, another French race organiser, Marcel Léotot, created what, as far as I can tell, was the first women’s stage race – the Circuit Lyonnais-Auvergne, which ran to three stages. Robinson took all three stages and the overall of that race, too.
I actually stumbled across this reading an article in Sudouest, a regional French newspaper. I mention this because Millie, from the Isle of Man, has been so completely forgotten that googling her produced just a handful of hits, and only really one that I could use as a cite in English for her achievement.
The whole story has an exasperating familiarity to it (with all due respect to Brad). Celebrate what our man just did! Yay Bradley Yay! And nobody remembers that a pioneering woman did it more than half a century earlier.
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