Sporting Bygones - Brian Robinson: When a Mirfield cyclist joined the hard men of sport

THERE is always a special feeling abroad – the French would call it un frisson – when the world's greatest bike race comes round again and this year's Tour de France will have a particular edge as Lance Armstrong bids farewell to the event which he has illuminated and haunted over the past decade and more.

With a record seven victories behind him, Armstrong has strong claims to be the greatest rider in the race's history and his record takes on almost superhuman status when the fact that his triumphs came after he had conquered testicular cancer is taken into consideration.

Yet there remain many, not least among the French media, who doubt that Armstrong is "clean" – that he has won his races without the use of drugs; the American and his supporters (of whom there seem remarkably few considering his achievements) point to a record of him never having a failed a test, despite being subject to more of them than any other cyclist in history.

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We shall see over the coming three weeks whether, at 38, Armstrong has the strength – we know he has the will-power – to overcome Alberto Contador, the Schleck brothers, Cadel Evans and Britain's Bradley Wiggins and we will once again be absorbed by the conundrum that is the Tour de France.

It is a unique event for many who have never pressed a pedal in anger, one which has encouraged otherwise reasonably sane holiday-makers enjoying a French summer in the quiet of the countryside to drive hundreds of kilometres in unbearable heat, stand for hours at an inhospitable roadside on some forsaken mountain and see the peloton whizz by in a couple of minutes, a blaze of colour and noise.

But the lure of the Tour began years before Armstrong's arrival, in times when holidays meant an afternoon at Scarborough or Morecambe, not a fortnight in France; days when the familiar names of Hutton and Compton, Hoad and Rosewall, Marciano and Robinson were, for a fleeting few weeks, joined by Bobet, Gaul, Anquetil, Bahamontes and another Robinson.

This one was a different animal to Sugar Ray, the dazzling, pompadoured middleweight who seemed to make a habit of losing his world title then regaining it as if by magic.

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This one was Brian, from Mirfield, a cyclist who had finished a highly-creditable eighth in the road-race at the Helsinki Olympics of 1952 then dared to venture into the world of the hard men of sport – even harder than the boxers, we were told – Europe's professional bike riders.

Our only contact with cycling abroad was through brief newspaper reports of the Tour de France but when he finished 14th in 1956 we had a new hero. His reputation grew when he became the first Briton to win a stage on the Tour two years later – over 106 miles from Saint Brieuc to Brest – and devotion to the race was confirmed.

It was given a new lustre when another Yorkshireman, Tom Simpson from Harworth, spent one glorious day (July 5, 1962) in the race leader's yellow jersey, the famed maillot jaune.

Sadly, Simpson is widely remembered today for more than being a brilliant rider driven by a burning ambition; his death on the climb of Mont Ventoux in the Tour of 1967 linked, for the first time to one innocent in Yorkshire as well as the horrified world out there, the sport of cycling to drugs.

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There had been suspicions earlier, there would soon be confirmation and eventually a series of scandals which would have resulted in a less resilient sport being cast into the wilderness: how could any serious company want to be involved in sponsorship alliances with, let alone the televising of, such a tainted business?

Yet the Tour de France remains with us, a highlight of every sporting summer to those smitten at an early age. There will be thousands of Brits – not to mention hordes of pink-legged Dutch, Belgian, Norwegian, German and Spanish enthusiasts – lining the shimmering roads of France for the next few weeks and upwards of a million will witness the final stage on the Champs Elysees.

They will have cast from their minds all suspicion surrounding Armstrong; despair over the botched case of Tour winner Pedro Delgado; startling revelations in 1998 when the Festina team doctor was found to have a stockpile of banned drugs in his car on the way to the start of the race in Dublin; mystery surrounding the death of Marco Pantani; exposure of Richard Virenque, Jan Ullrich, David Millar, Floyd Landis and others.

Instead, they will reminisce, their memories coloured by age and nationality.

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Feats of riders like Jacques Anquetil, Louison Bobet, Charly Gaul, Federico Bahamontes, Eddy Merckx (perhaps the best of them all), Bernard Hinault, Greg Lemond, Miguel Indurain and Armstrong himself will dominate conversation as the faithful wait for the riders to pass.

Among the English-speakers, as well as Robinson and Simpson there will be talk of Barry Hoban, Alan Ramsbottom, Michael Wright, Sean Kelly, Stephen Roche, Sean Yates, Chris Boardman and Mark Cavendish.

There will also be acknowledgement that the Tour de France, for all its documented and suspected failings, is now a global event attracting competitors from a suitably wide canvas, from North and South America, the Antipodes, South Africa, what used to be the USSR, even the Far East.

Every year the conviction grows among a section of the cycling fraternity that the Tour should reflect its changed dynamic, that it should embrace Europe by taking in several countries on the prestigious route every year with only the closing stages – including the iconic climbs of the Alps and the Pyrenees and the run to Paris – being in the country which bears its name.

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That might appeal to the neighbours and to the money-men but surely not to France. The Tour is a French creation – warts and all – and should stay fundamentally a French institution; they are surely far too sensible (and stubborn) to let it go.