Sean Kelly (cyclist) - Professional Career

Professional Career

Kelly's first professional race was the Étoile de Bessèges. It started on 7 February 1977 and lasted six days. Kelly came 10th on the first day. The Flandria team was in two parts: the strongest riders, such as the world champion Freddy Maertens, were in the main section, based in Belgium. Kelly rode with the second section, based more in France because Flandria wanted to sell more of its mopeds, scooters and bicycles there. The strongest riders in both camps came together for big races. Kelly was recruited as a domestique for Maertens in the main team for year's Paris–Nice - shortly afterwards he won his first race, the opening stage of the Tour of Romandy - and stayed in it for the Tour de France, in which he also won a stage.

Kelly stayed with de Gribaldy for 1977 and 1978. Then in 1978 Michel Pollentier was disqualified from the Tour de France after cheating a drugs test on the afternoon that he took the race lead. He left the team at the end of the season and started his own, with a new backer, Splendor. Both Maertens and Pollentier wanted Kelly. Pollentier and Splendor offered Kelly more and made him a team leader. But Splendor was new and logistic problems became obvious. The bikes were in poor state - enough that Splendor decided not to ride Paris–Roubaix - and the manager, Robert Lauwers, was replaced. Kelly rose above it and rode for himself. The writer Robin Magowan said:

Some people can do business on the committee system; others find that life is only fun when you are running the show. In Kelly's case it was to mean working for the collection of underpaid has-beens that de Gribaldy habitually assembled. But a smaller, less pretentious team can have its advantages for a rider of Kelly's sort. When you don't have to compete for a team's loyalty you can concentrate on winning races, and that's exactly what Kelly proceeded to do.

In time the team improved. Kelly received few offers from elsewhere and Splendor matched those he did get. He was paid about £30,000 plus bonuses in his last season. But strengthening the team had included bringing in another sprinter, Eddy Planckaert, and Kelly's role as a foreigner in the team was unclear. He heard that de Gribaldy was starting a new team and the two were reunited in 1982 at Sem-France Loire. By now Kelly had a reputation as a sprinter who could not win stage races, although he did finish fourth in the 1980 Vuelta a España. De Gribaldy employed him as unambiguous team leader, someone he believed could win stage races and not just stages. Kelly won Paris–Nice and four of its stages. On the last of those, a time-trial to the col d'Eze, he beat Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle and pushed him out of the lead. That year he also won the maillot vert (the green jersey of best sprinter) of the Tour de France. He finished third in the world championship in England and at the end of the year married his girlfriend, Linda Grant, the daughter of a local cycling club official. Carrick-on-Suir named the town square "the Sean Kelly Square" in tribute to his achievements in the 1982 Tour de France and his bronze medal at the championship The following year Kelly again won Paris–Nice and then the Critérium International and the Tour de Suisse as well as the maillot vert of the Tour de France the second time in a row.