Obituary Graham Webb 1944-2017

If Bugatti made bike riders, they’d make bike riders like Graham Webb. He was phenomenal, his power output huge. He was strong and fast, and he was the 1967 amateur world road race champion.

- Chris Sidwells

Stories are still told about him in Europe. About how he lapped the field four times in a Dutch criterium. How he challenged the Dutch national team pursuit squad solo, and beat them. And about his lung capacity, so big he once exploded a testing machine.

He was a physical outlier, and if he was racing today sports scientists would be all over him.

Graham Webb was born in war-broken Birmingham in 1944, where he grew up so poor he once said: “I never thought of going back. There was nothing there for me, only bad memories. Anyway, when I first came to Europe I thought I was on holiday, and I still do.”

His cycling career rapidly took off when he moved to the Netherlands in 1965 and dominated races there. His world title came just two years later, when British cycling was still reeling from the death of Tom Simpson.

The road races were held in Heerlen, in the hilly part of the Netherlands. Beryl Burton won the women’s title, then Webb got into the winning break in the men’s amateur race, the equivalent of the under-23 race today.