Here’s to you, Millie Robinson
It was around lunchtime on 1st October 1955 when the buses, cars and vans started to arrive in Elbeuf, a town situated on the banks of the river Seine, around 80km southwest of the Channel port of Le Havre. It was a Saturday, still a working day back then. Nevertheless, the streets were busy with onlookers. Excitement was in the air – a bike race was in town.
‘The town of 100 chimneys’, so-called because of its history of cloth making, was hosting the fourth stage of an international women’s race around Normandy. It was just the second time such a race had been organised, with the three-stage Circuit Feminin Lyonnais-Auvergne having been held in July. That race had been dominated by British riders, with Millie Robinson, a 31-year-old from the Isle of Man, winning the second stage and the overall title. Fellow Briton June Thackray also tasted success, winning the final stage and finishing second in the overall standings.
‘First reports did not demonstrate our full superiority in France,’ Eileen Gray, the team’s manager, dryly remarked on their return. Now Robinson was back in France, part of a sixstrong British squad again assembled by Gray, and eyeing another win.
The riders had 90 minutes to kill in Elbeuf before the afternoon’s stage started. The Brits went in search of food, but Robinson had a hunger for more than just a sandwich. Lying ten seconds behind race leader Lily Herse, what Robinson really wanted was information on the stage route ahead.
The British cycling journalist Jock Wadley
