Robert John Maitland was a British racing cyclist.
18 Facts About Bob Maitland
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Bob Maitland won national championships in Britain, tackled long-distance records, was the best-placed British rider in the 1948 Olympic road race, and rode for Britain in the Tour de France.
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Bob Maitland's career coincided with a civil war within British cycling as two organisations, the National Cyclists Union and the British League of Racing Cyclists, fought for the future of road racing.
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Bob Maitland was born in Birmingham and developed an interest in cycle-racing in his teens.
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Bob Maitland collected autographs from pre-war riders such as Eddie Larkin and Charles Holland and sometimes cycled out to watch them ride time-trials, which were then the only cycle races held on the road.
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Bob Maitland finished in 1h 13m 22s, 10 minutes slower than the winner.
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Bob Maitland won a junior race in Warwickshire, near Birmingham in 1939 and the following year joined the Solihull Cycling Club.
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Bob Maitland gained 40 seconds on the field but another rider caught him with two of the 28 laps to go and he finished second.
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Bob Maitland was an engineer, a reserved occupation in Britain during the second world war.
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Bob Maitland rode his first massed-start event in 1943, finishing sixth after 30 miles.
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That same year, Bob Maitland won a silver medal as a member of the British road race team at the 1948 Summer Olympics.
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Bob Maitland finished third in the NCU's national road championship once more in 1949.
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Bob Maitland came second in its independent road championship in 1952 and the champion in 1953.
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In 1958, Bob Maitland rode for his own cycling team, Bob Maitland Cycles.
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Bob Maitland knew nothing about road racing and he admitted it.
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Bob Maitland finished sixth and won a medal as member of the second team.
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Bob Maitland finished four seconds behind the winner, Jose Beyaert of France.
18.
Bob Maitland rode for Britain in the 1955 Tour de France - the race was then competed by national teams - in a team selected by cycling journalists because the civil war between the National Cyclists Union and the British League of Racing Cyclists made it impossible to leave the job to either.