Shay Elliott

Shay Elliott

Seamus Elliott in 1963
Personal information
Full name	Seamus Elliott
Nickname	Shay
Born	(1934-06-04)4 June 1934 Dublin, Irish Free State
Died	4 May 1971(1971-05-04) (aged 36) Dublin, Ireland
Team information
Discipline	Road
Role	Rider
Amateur teams
-1955	Dublin Wheelers
1970–	Bray Wheelers
Professional teams
1956–1958	Helyett-Potin
1959–1961	Helyett-Fynsec
1962–1964	Saint Raphael-Geminiani
1965	Ford France-Gitane
1966–1967	Mercier-BP-Hutchinson
1970	Falcon
Major wins
Grand Tours Tour de France 1 individual stage (1963) Giro d'Italia 1 individual stage (1960) Vuelta a España 2 individual stages (1962, 1963) One-day races and Classics National Road Race Championships (1954, 1955) Omloop Het Volk (1959)
Medal record Representing  Ireland Men's road bicycle racing World Championships 1962 Salò Elite Men's Road Race

Seamus "Shay" Elliott (4 June 1934 – 4 May 1971) was an

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. 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 from the working class area of Crumlin in Dublin, the eldest son of James Elliott, a motorbike mechanic,^[1] 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.^[1]

Amateur career

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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

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

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.

Leulliot remembered how Elliott had won the

Elliott turned professional for the 1956 season.

Professional career

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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

That season Elliott rode the Tour de France, then run for national teams, in a mixed team that included the Englishman, Brian Robinson. Robinson rode above his level across the Massif Central and next day paid the price; he trailed far behind the field. William Fotheringham wrote:

In hot weather, these are some of the toughest roads in France, constantly rising and falling. Elliott remained with Robinson, chivvying him, pacing him, pouring water on his head as the Tour's doctor, Pierre Dumas administered glucose tablets. It was the kind of heroic spectacle the Tour reporters loved. Robinson en perdition ran the next day's headline in L'Équipe, which described Elliott's efforts as "attentions de mère poule" – the solicitousness of a mother hen.^[3]

Both finished outside the day's race elimination time limit, and expected to be sent home. However, the team's manager, Sauveur Ducazeaux, insisted the judges apply a rule that no rider in the first ten could be eliminated. 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 always regretted the outcome, and when he won the next stage, told journalists that he did it for Elliott.

In 1960, Elliott became the first English-speaking rider to take the pink jersey in the Giro d'Italia.^[1] In 1962, he came third in the 1962 Vuelta a España, coming second in the points classification, and winning the fourth stage; he led the race for nine days.

In the 1962 world road championship at Salò in Italy, he got into the winning break with Stablinski. Stablinski was a team-mate in the professional peloton and a friend but a rival in the championship, where riders rode in national teams. However, Elliott and Stablinski worked to wear down the other break members. When Stablinski attacked, Elliott refused to chase and the Frenchman won alone. Elliott eventually broke away to take the silver medal. Elliott admitted he had sacrificed his chance for Stablinski's benefit. "Team loyalty was a theme that ran throughout Elliott's career," noted the editor of Cycling, Martin Ayres. Elliott said: "I'm not supposed to say that I helped Jean, but he's the best friend I've got in cycling and godfather to my son, Pascal. So I couldn't very well go after him, could I?"^[4]

His best result was in the

Elliott spent his career as a domestique, a rider who sacrifices his chances for his leader, but with the right to sprint for wins. He made a career from appearance contracts and start money, riding criteriums in Belgium – the races that Leulliot said would burn him out – and races in Britain, including a meeting at the velodrome at Herne Hill in London where the star attraction was the Italian, Fausto Coppi.

Elliott also rode and won the professional race on the Isle of Man, the Manx Premier.

Controversies

Elliott was contracted to ride London-Holyhead in 1965, at 275 miles the longest single-day race in the world not to use pacers.^[5] Tom Simpson won, beating Elliott and a domestic professional, Albert Hitchen. Controversy started the moment that Cycling printed a picture of the sprint. Elliott had his hands tugging his brakes before the line. The magazine suggested he was braking to avoid the crowd further down the road, but many thought it a fix.^{[citation needed]} Another rider in the race, Pete Ryalls, said in Procycling in 2008:

The fix was for Barry Hoban to win. Barry was touch and go whether he'd get another contract because he'd done sweet FA all season. And it all went wrong because he didn't have the form anyway and it's a bloody long way if you don't have the legs. And the thing that messed it up was that going across Anglesey a big tall lanky guy called Peter Gordon. He pushed off and caused all sorts of consternation and the only people who could get across to him were Simpson and the guys he'd brought across with him, and Hitchen... so presumably they sorted it out between them afterwards, but that was the fix: that Hoban should win. I know for certain that it was.

Elliott, braking to stop Hitchen behind him, so Simpson could win, was riding in Simpson's pay. Simpson offered Elliott £1,000 to help him win the world championship in 1963. Elliott refused, speculation being that he had been offered more by someone else.^[6]

Elliott later wrote a newspaper article suggesting that he made more money by selling races than winning them.

Decline

Elliott's career started to fade from the mid-1960s. He moved in 1966 from Anquetil's team to the rival Mercier-BP, sponsored by a bicycle company and an oil company and led by Anquetil's rival, Raymond Poulidor. Elliott planned for retirement by opening a hotel in Loctudy in Brittany. He had no prior experience in the hospitality trade and that project took so much of his time that he could ride only local races. After promising Mercier-BP that he would make amends in the world championship, the chain came off his bicycle and he finished 15th.

Things grew worse. His marriage to Marguerite, failed.^[7] The hotel, too, failed and Elliott lost all his money.

To try to restore his situation, he sold a story to the British tabloid newspaper,

Elliott returned to Dublin in 1967 and set up a metal-working business in Prince's Street in the city centre,[1] with his father. Marguerite remained in France, with his only son, Pascal. Friends helped him to build a small apartment above the business.

Elliott tried a racing comeback in Britain in 1970 with the Falcon Cycles team and came 21st in his first race, London-Holyhead. Domestic professional racing was not as attractive or rewarding as continental. Combining cycling with a full-time job meant he struggled.

Cycling in Ireland

Despite problems, he continued to ride – he was active with the Bray Wheelers club based south of Dublin, training juniors and formulating plans for Irish cycling. He once ran for vice-president of the Irish Cycling Federation, but lost to Paddy McQuaid.

Death

On 21 April 1971, his father died.^[1] Two weeks after his father's death,^[7] on 4 May 1971, Shay Elliott was found dead in the living quarters above the family business premises, at the age of just 36. The cause of death was a shotgun wound, rupturing his heart and liver,^[1] from a gun about whose unreliable fittings friends had warned him. The coroner recorded an "open verdict" and three competing theories circulated about the cause of death: that it was indeed a gun accident,^[1] that he committed suicide,^[1] and that he was killed by a Breton crime syndicate to whom he owed money from his failed hotel business^[2] (he had worried about people "hanging round" near the premises in previous weeks). He was laid to rest alongside his father at St Mochonog's Church, Kilmacanogue, County Wicklow.

Legacy

The Shay Elliott Memorial Road Race, organised by Bray Wheelers Cycling Club, is run every year in Ireland in his honour. The race was previously (since 1959) known as the Route de Chill Mhantain (Circuit of Wicklow). It became the Shay Elliott Trophy in the late sixties, then the Shay Elliott Memorial after his death in 1971.

A monument to Elliott, erected by friends and Bray Wheelers Cycling Club, stands at the top of the climb from Drumgoff Bridge, Glenmalure heading towards Laragh, County Wicklow, where the race's KOH mountain prime is situated.

Delegates from the Tour de France visited Elliott's grave when the Tour came to Ireland in 1998.^[10]

Coverage

In 2009 a documentary film, Cycle of Betrayal, about Shay Elliott, was shown in Ireland (first on Setanta Ireland)^[1] and the UK. A book, a section of a book, and many articles, have also been written about Elliott.

Major results

Grand Tour general classification results timeline

Grand Tour	1956	1957	1958	1959	1960	1961	1962	1963	1964
Vuelta a España	—	—	—	—	—	—	3	41	—
Giro d'Italia	—	—	—	40	68	DNF	—	—	—
Tour de France	DNF	—	48	DNF	—	47	—	61	DNF

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Seamus Elliott.

• Seamus Elliott's palmares, memoire-du-cyclisme.net (in French)]
• Shay Elliott at Cycling Archives