Jean Robic - Retirement and Death

Retirement and Death

Jock Wadley wrote:
Puteaux was where Robic had scored an important cyclo-cross win at the beginning of his main career. Robic's popularity has always been enormous. At his farewell, he was given a great reception. On the course was a very steep hill, which had to be covered 20 times. Robic, at 40, could have been dropped and nobody would have accused him of not trying. But he hung on with a grimace to show how he could suffer to finish his career en beauté. As he crossed the line, he was surrounded by riders less than half his age.

Robic fell again while in the running to win the Tour de France of 1953. He broke bones in his spine. He rode the Tour again in 1954, 1955 and 1959 without finishing. He rode local races and lived from the start money he was offered. He also went back to cyclo-cross, riding throughout the winter. Robic rode his last race in 1967, in the Puteaux suburb of Paris. He was congratulated at the finish by his old enemy, Louison Bobet.

Robic found it hard to fit into an ordinary life when his career ended. He ran the family café but it failed, as did his marriage. From then on he became depressed. For a long time he went without work. At others, he tried stunts such as being the referee of professional wrestling bouts, where his shortness encouraged wrestlers to throw him out of the ring. He also sat on a bicycle in the publicity procession of the Tour de France. He became depressed and wandered the streets, asking for work, until his friend, Eugène Letendre, took him into his business.

He died in a car accident near Claye-Souilly on his way home from a party at Germiny-Lévèque in which Joop Zoetemelk was celebrating his own win in the Tour. Robic's monument on the hill outside Rouen where he won the Tour shows him in his leather helmet. He is buried in the cemetery at Wissous A room in the town hall in Radenac is a museum in his memory.