Seamus Elliott (1934-1971), the first Irish rider to ride Tour de France, was the domestique of Jacques Anquetil and Jean Stablinski during most of his career. (The name of the team might have been changed from time to time, but it was basically the same group of riders for many years.) In the later years of his career, Elliott switched team and for a short time he became the domestique of Raymond Poulidor.
Already showing his capibilities in several amateur competitions during the first part of the 1950s, Elliott turned pro in 1956.
When he was not pledged to help the captain of his team, was successful competing one-day races with lesser importance. It seems Omloop Het Nieuwsbalt (Omloop Het Volk in thise days) suited him the most. Riding the cobbled spring classic for the first time in1957, he escaped with Brian Robinson. Although this break was caught, Elliott’s performance was noticed. Two years later his breakaway attempt, this time with Fred De Bruyn together, was successful, and he became the first non-Belgian cyclist to win the race.1
Seamus Elliott, as a domestique, participated in all the three grand tours for at least one time during his career. And as it used to happen with domestiques quite often, he had the chance to lead the general classification of all the theee big races, for several days. So, Elliott became the first Irish rider to wear the yellow, the pink and the actusl leader jersey of Vuelta a Espana for at least one day.
In the history book, we can find Seamus Elliott’s name not under the categories of the first Irish cyclist to do so and so, but in many cases, like wearing the pink or the yellow jersey he was also the first English speaking cyclist to managed those results.
Unfortunately, Seamus Elliott was one of those cyclists had difficukties oitside the cycling world. Failures in private and budiness life, also drug comsumption made him a protagonists of tabloid articles.
In 1971, after a few weeks of his fater’s death, Elliott found dead, caused buy a shotgun, in his home. Either it was a suicide or just an accident with an ill-fitting weapon, the story behind his tragic end remains unclear.
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