Louison Bobet
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Louis "Louison" Bobet (March 12, 1925 - March 13, 1983) was a French professional road cyclist. He was one of just eight riders to win the Tour de France at least three times, and also the first ever to win the race three times in succession, a feat he accomplished from 1953 to 1955. He also won the Tour's King of the Mountains competition in 1950.
Bobet's exceptional career included victories in the French Road Race Championship (1950 & 51), Milan-Sanremo (1951), Giro di Lombardia (1951), Critérium International (1951 & 52), Paris-Nice (1952), Grand Prix des Nations (1952), World Road Race Championship (1954), Ronde van Vlaanderen (1955), Dauphiné Libéré (1955), Tour de Luxembourg (1955), Paris-Roubaix (1956) and Bordeaux-Paris (1959).
Louis Bobet was born on March 12, 1925, above a baker's shop in St. Méen-le-Grand in Brittany, north-western France. It was as Louis that he was known for his early years as a rider, even as a professional, until the diminutive Louison, used by his family, gained in popularity. The ending -on is a diminutive in French but outside Brittany the name Louison refers more usually to a girl.
Bobet was the first great French rider of the post-war period. He rode his first Tour de France in 1947 when he was 22, but he did not finish. The following year he came fourth, won two stages and wore the yellow jersey of race leader. In 1950 he came third. But it was in 1953 that he really impressed, leaving the field behind on a stage that crossed the Vars region and climbing the Izoard mountain alone in an era when the roads were still rutted and strewn with stones and when the gearing on his bicycle forced him to fight merely to keep it moving.
He won that day by more than five minutes in Briançon and his performance is considered one of the greatest rides of the race. He was greeted as winner in Paris by great stars of the past such as Maurice Garin, winner of the first Tour in 1903, Bobet's own first win marking the Tour's 50th anniversary.
Bobet's career spanned everything from round-the-houses races to the Tour de France and the world road championship. But he was troubled throughout by saddle sores that frequently made riding a misery and which some argue made his record of victories shorter than it might have been.
The most striking feature of Bobet the man rather than rider was his ambition to behave like a Hollywood matinée idol, a sort of David Niven character in a dinner suit [tuxedo]. It brought him much ribbing from other French riders of the era, including the more down-to-earth Raphaël Géminiani, with whom his rows were legendary. Géminiani says that Bobet's diffident and elegant manner made him less popular even in Bobet's native cold, wet farming country of Brittany than the more rustic, forthright manners of other Bretons such as Jean Robic.
Bobet also found it hard to hide his disappointment and in his early years as a professional was prone to burst into tears, leading to his nickname in the bunch of "La Bobette", giving his surname a female ending.
The British professional Brian Robinson called Bobet "a private man and a little moody" and said he would sulk if things went wrong. The French journalist René De Latour said of Bobet in "Sporting Cyclist" that "he didn't look good on a bike" and that he had "the legs of a football [soccer] player".
Bobet was driven by personal hygiene and refused to accept his first yellow jersey because, through the intervention of a sponsor making artificial yarn, it had not been made with the pure wool he believed to be the only healthy material for a sweating and dusty rider. The jersey had to be taken back and another produced, said the Tour organiser, Jacques Goddet, in his autobiography.
Bobet's brother Jean was also a professional and Louison's career effectively ended when their car crashed outside Paris in the autumn of 1960.
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 then unknown seawater health treatment known as thalassotherapy. He fell ill, however, and died the day after his 58th birthday. His brother Jean still does his best to preserve his memory and there is a museum to Louison's memory in St Méen-le-Grand, the idea of village postmaster Raymond Quérat.
[edit] See also
- Louison Bobet bicycles
[edit] External links
| Preceded by Fausto Coppi |
World Road Racing Champion 1954 |
Succeeded by Stan Ockers |
| Preceded by Fausto Coppi |
Winner of the Tour de France 1953-55 |
Succeeded by Roger Walkowiak |
