Seamus Elliott - Professional Career

Professional Career

Elliott turned professional for the Helyett-Félix Potin team. Helyett was a bicycle factory. He won his first race, the GP d'Echo Alger in Algeria, outsprinting André Darrigade. He also won the GP Catox and the GP Isbergues. In his first major race of 1957, the Omloop "Het Volk" in Belgium, he made a race-long break with Englishman Brian Robinson. The break was caught near the finish but Elliott's form was noted. He won the Circuit de la Vienne.

He became a team-mate of Jacques Anquetil and Jean Stablinski, staying with the team under different sponsors for much of his career.

In 1959 he won Omloop "Het Volk", the first foreigner to succeed. He attacked on the Mur de Grammont with 30 km to ride and dropped all his rivals except Fred De Bruyne, the Belgian hope. The pair raced together to the finish where Elliott won easily. 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.

Both finished outside the time limit and expected to be sent home. But 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.

In 1962 Elliott came third in the 1962 Vuelta a España, winning the fourth stage and coming second in the points classification. 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. Stablinksi was a team-mate in the professional peloton but a rival in the championship, where riders rode in national teams. However, Elliott and Stablinksi worked to wear down the other break members. When Stablinksi 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?"

Elliott's best result was in the 1963 Tour de France. There the pair's roles were reversed. Both men broke clear in a 12-man group on the third stage, to Roubaix. Neither tried to improve the breakaway group's lead because their leader, Anquetil, was in the main field. The breakaway lasted 150 km, however, and the lead grew to nine minutes. When Elliott twice punctured, Stablinksi controlled the break to allow him to regain his place. With no chance left for Anquetil to catch the leaders or to reduce his disadvantage, Elliott and Stablinski were freed to follow their own tactics. Stablinski led the group on to a cycle path beside one of the cobbled roads for which the area was known. The only rider not to follow was Elliott, he and Stablinski calculating that the others would find it hard to get off the cycle path once then were on it. Elliott sprinted away on the cobbles with six kilometres to the finish in the velodrome in Roubaix. He won by 33 seconds, enough to give him the yellow jersey of leadership. He held it for three days. Another 20 years passed before another Irishman, Sean Kelly, led the Tour.

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.

Elliott was contracted to ride London-Holyhead in 1965, at 275 miles the longest single-day race in the world not to use pacers. 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. Elliott later wrote a newspaper article admitting that he made more money by selling races than winning them.

Another rider in the race, a domestic semi-professional called 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 had already offered Elliott £1,000 to help him win the world championship in 1963. Elliott had refused, speculation being that he had been offered more by someone else.