# Tell us an interesting random fact you stumbled across (Part 1)

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [April 13, 2020, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674 "2020-04-13T03:19:22Z")\
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**Author:** ![Treppenwitz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treppenwitz/32/3445_2.png) [@Treppenwitz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Treppenwitz)\
**Post date:** [October 28, 2021, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-an-interesting-random-fact-you-stumbled-across-part-1/851674/2995 "2021-10-28T20:56:23Z")

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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.

[Source](https://www.cyclingnews.com/features/international-womens-day-7-remarkable-women-who-made-their-mark-on-cyclings-history/)

I actually stumbled across this reading [an article in Sudouest](https://www.sudouest.fr/sport/cyclisme/tour-de-france-2022-la-difficile-histoire-de-l-epreuve-feminine-de-retour-apres-12-ans-d-absence-6563552.php), 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.

j

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