Louison Bobet was the first great French rider of the post-war period and the first rider to win the Tour de France in three successive years, from 1953 to 1955.
57 Facts About Louison Bobet
2.
Louis Bobet was born one of three children above his father's baker's shop in the rue de Montfort, Saint-Meen-le-Grand, near Rennes.
3.
Louison Bobet was known as Louis in his early years as a rider, even as a professional, until the diminutive Louison gained in popularity.
4.
Louison Bobet's sister played table tennis, his brother Jean football, although he became a professional cyclist.
5.
Louison Bobet played both table tennis and football and became Brittany champion at table tennis.
6.
Louison Bobet raced in his local area and won four events for unlicensed riders in 1941.
7.
Louison Bobet is said to have carried messages for the Resistance during the second world war.
8.
Louison Bobet applied for racing licence on leaving the army and by error was sent one for an independent, or semi-professional.
9.
Louison Bobet benefited from the right to compete against professionals as well as amateurs.
10.
Louison Bobet came second in the Brittany championship and rode the national championship in Paris.
11.
Louison Bobet left the field to catch two riders who had broken clear.
12.
Louison Bobet dropped one and outsprinted the other to become national champion.
13.
Louison Bobet turned fully professional for Stella, a bicycle factory in Nantes.
14.
Louison Bobet lost the yellow jersey the following day but regained it by winning the sixth stage, to Biarritz.
15.
Louison Bobet had 20 minutes' lead over the veteran Italian, Gino Bartali as the race entered the Alps.
16.
Louison Bobet did not finish in 1949, struggling from the start.
17.
Louison Bobet dropped out on the first day in the mountains, along with four other members of the national team.
18.
Louison Bobet is a good climber and time-triallist who rides with authority and intelligence.
19.
Louison Bobet is careful with his preparation, careful with his efforts and totally serious.
20.
Louison Bobet rode the 1951 Tour in the blue-white-red of national champion again but cracked in the mountains.
21.
Louison Bobet lost 40 minutes on the last day in the mountains even though the race was taking it easy, Hugo Koblet already being unbeatable.
22.
Louison Bobet had given his all for the Tour but everyone had turned against him.
23.
Louison Bobet climbed the Col d'Izoard alone on roads still rutted and strewn with stones and when the gearing on his bicycle forced him to fight to keep it moving.
24.
Louison Bobet stayed with the other leading climbers as they ascended the Vars.
25.
The alert and very capable Louison Bobet jumped on his wheel and the pair disappeared up the mountain.
26.
Louison Bobet was a good descender and dropped Lorono on the way down the Vars.
27.
Meanwhile, Deledda, upon being told that Louison Bobet was on his way, eased up and waited for his captain.
28.
Louison Bobet had finally arrived as the premier stage racer in the world.
29.
Louison Bobet won that day by more than five minutes in Briancon, took the yellow jersey as leader of the general classification, then won the time trial and finished the Tour with 14 minutes' lead.
30.
Louison Bobet was greeted in Paris by Maurice Garin, winner of the first Tour in 1903, celebrating the Tour's 50th anniversary.
31.
Louison Bobet took the lead after four days, then lost it on day eight.
32.
The jersey changed hands until Louison Bobet again dominated on the Izoard.
33.
Louison Bobet left Stella after eight years to ride for Mercier, the team riding bicycles carrying Bobet's name and sold by him but made in the Mercier factory in St-Etienne.
34.
Louison Bobet completed his hat-trick of successive wins in 1955, having that year won the Tour of Flanders and Criterium du Dauphine Libere.
35.
Louison Bobet won the Tour but with a saddle boil that needed surgery.
36.
Louison Bobet learned to fly a plane while forced not to ride.
37.
Louison Bobet has conquered glory and fortune but he is badly ill.
38.
Those who knew Louison Bobet well stayed out of his way during the week before a big race, as he was neurotic and totally unbearable.
39.
That he relied enormously on the help of Marcel Bidot, Geminiani and his brother, Jean, is without question, but really the story of Louison Bobet is the story of a man who conquered himself.
40.
The French journalist Rene de Latour said of Louison Bobet in Sporting Cyclist that "he didn't look good on a bike" and that he had "the legs of a football [soccer] player".
41.
Louison Bobet spoke out against French involvement in a war against communists in Indo-China.
42.
Louison Bobet said he wasn't a Marxist but a pacifist.
43.
Louison Bobet was driven by personal hygiene and refused to accept his first yellow jersey because it had not been made with the pure wool he believed the only healthy material for a sweating and dusty rider.
44.
Louison Bobet was always exquisitely courteous but his principles were as hard as the granite blocks of his native Brittany coast.
45.
Louison Bobet was one of the first riders to employ a personal soigneur, taking his lead from Coppi.
46.
Louison Bobet took on Raymond Le Bert, a physiotherapist from St-Brieuc, as well as a secretary and a driver.
47.
Le Bert said he had met Coppi, whom Louison Bobet admired for his "modern" techniques but refused to have anything to do with the Italian's suitcase of drugs.
48.
The conversation at the table was particularly lively and Louison Bobet was being challenged for saying that he had never taken the slightest drug or stimulant.
49.
Louison Bobet was obliged to admit that he had drunk the small bottles prepared for him by his soigneur at the time without knowing exactly what they contained.
50.
Louison Bobet presented prizes at the annual presentation of the British Best All-Rounder time-trial competition at the Royal Albert Hall, London, in 1954.
51.
Louison Bobet gave a yellow jersey to a veteran competitor, Vic Gibbons.
52.
Louison Bobet flew from Paris to London in a de Havilland Dove chartered by a London timber-merchant and cycling enthusiast, Vic Jenner.
53.
Louison Bobet had a succession of businesses after he stopped racing, including a clothes shop, but he became best known for investing in and developing the seawater health treatment of thalassotherapy.
54.
Louison Bobet had used it when recovering from his car crash.
55.
Louison Bobet opened the Louison Bobet centre beside the sea at Port du Crouesty at Quiberon.
56.
Louison Bobet fell ill and died of cancer the day after his 58th birthday.
57.
Louison Bobet is interred in the cemetery of Saint-Meen-le-Grand, and there is a museum to his memory in the town, the idea of village postmaster Raymond Querat.