Graham Webb was born on 13 January 1944, as the youngest of five children brought up by a war widow in a slum in Birmingham, England.

He began riding from Birmingham to Gloucester and back, just because it was a magical 100-mile (160 km) round trip, and persisted until he could do it without literally falling into a ditch from exhaustion.

Wearing a T-shirt and pumps, Webb set off under the impression that he had to catch the riders that had started ahead of him in order to win.

On a Monday evening in 1966 at Salford Park, Birmingham, having led his team to win the National Team Pursuit Championships the previous Saturday, Webb set new national track records at 10 miles, 25 miles and 1 hour; on a track which had shallow bankings and bumpy tarmac, and on which it was deemed impossible to set any kind of record.

In 1967, Webb and his wife sold all they owned and moved to Hilversum in the Netherlands, where a Dutch journalist and race organiser, Charles Ruys, had offered to find him a club and accommodation.

In his first Dutch race, a semi-classic called the Omloop van de Baronie, Webb crashed over a river bank and finished 16th dripping mud and slime.

Webb led the chase, dropping Buckley in the process, and took the lead in a corner late in the race, accelerating clear to win alone.

Mechanical trouble in the Omloop Het Volk, followed by knee pain in Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne meant that by the time he was fit to ride Paris-Nice, the team's leaders had abandoned him to the extent that he found himself alone in the rain at the end of the first stage, he left his bike in a bar in Paris and was given a lift home by a spectator.

He opened a bar and had his world champion's rainbow jersey on display; when it became dirty from cigarette smoke, and as depression rose over what could have been, Webb took it down and threw it in the fire.

Webb raced successfully as an amateur, especially on the track, but became seriously unwell when he suffered an abdominal aortic aneurysm whilst riding in Ghent.