A Yorkshire cycling pioneer who made history in some of the world’s most famous sporting events has died aged 91.

Brian Robinson, who grew up in Ravensthorpe and Mirfield, was the first Yorkshireman and Briton to win a stage of the Tour de France.

He was also the first to even complete cycling’s greatest race, and the first to stand on the podium of one of the sport’s Monuments, Milan-Sanremo.

Born in 1930 and raised during wartime, his first memories of cycling were of riding the 30 or so miles from his home in Mirfield to Harrogate to visit relatives once a month – simply because it was the only transport available.

The genes were clearly present as his elder brother Des also raced, giving the young Brian a role model to aspire to.

The legendary cyclist’s journey officially began aged 13 at the Huddersfield Road Club, widely known as “the Road Club”.

After riding for the Army Cycling Team while doing his national service, Robinson joined the Yorkshire-based Ellis Briggs team in 1954.

He was quickly snapped up by the nation’s top squad, Hercules, a year later, finding his way to the start-line of the Tour de France.

When Robinson reached Paris on the final stage of the 1955 Tour de France, he earnt the accolade of being the first Briton to have ever finished the race.

His team-mate Tony Hoar followed him over the line.

Three years later he took Britain’s first stage win, on stage seven from Saint-Brieuc to Brest, though he did not get to raise his arms in victory that day.

He only learnt he had won until the evening when news came through that Italian Arigo Padovan, first across the line, had been disqualified.

He made up for that a year later when he won stage 20 of the 1959 Tour, from Annecy to Chalon-sur-Saone, by a full 20 minutes.

His success was not limited solely to the Tour, and in 1961 he was the first British rider to win a major stage race with victory in the Criterium du Dauphine.

Among his other notable results, he finished fourth in La Fleche Wallone in 1955, eighth overall in the 1956 Vuelta a Espana, and was the first Briton on a Monument podium with third in Milan-Sanremo in 1957.

It was all a long way from Robinson’s first days on a bike.

The only way a Briton could sustain a career in cycling was to move to the continent, a road less travelled back then and full of challenges.

It was often a hand-to-mouth existence in a foreign land, living in digs and racing as much as possible as the event hotels were more comfortable than staying at home.

Robinson had to sell his car to fund his expenses and after he first married his wife Audrey the couple lived in a caravan on the Cote d’Azur.

Bradford Telegraph and Argus: Brian Robinson, the first Briton to win a stage of the Tour de France, has died at the age of 91. Picture: PABrian Robinson, the first Briton to win a stage of the Tour de France, has died at the age of 91. Picture: PA (Image: PA)

“It didn’t seem so bad because I wanted to do it,” he later said.

Later he would briefly share a Paris flat with a young Tom Simpson as Robinson nurtured the bright talent who would burn out all too quickly.

By the early 1960s Robinson decided this was no life for a young family, he retired and moved back to Mirfield.

He immediately took up a job as a builder, not fully realising the foundations he had already laid down in cycling.

He would live in relative anonymity for decades, maintaining a membership of the Huddersfield Road Club which lasted more than 70 years.

He was rarely recognised until he became an ambassador for the Grand Depart of the Tour de France in Yorkshire in 2014.

In 2018 he was able to watch his grandson, Jake Womersley, compete in the race for Holdsworth Pro Cycling.

It was in these final years of his life – as he continued to zip up and down the hills of Yorkshire, aided at the end by an e-bike – that the gravity of Robinson’s legacy in cycling was fully understood.

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