[2] Born in Ancteville,[3] Delisle started racing as an amateur in 1961 and won the Tour du Lac Leman classic in 1963 and the national team time-trial championship in 1964, with Jean Jourden.

He joined the AC Boulogne-Billancourt in the capital's north-western suburbs, a club which had supplied riders to the Peugeot professional team.

Delisle won the national championship on a wind-blown circuit at Soissons in 1969[7] and on 28 June went to the start of the Tour de France in Roubaix.

Pingeon had won the Tour in 1967 but he was anxious about getting through the Pyrenees in a position to match Eddy Merckx, who had started dominating world cycling.

[10] But even so, Roger felt threatened and, when we were caught, he gave me a good talking-to (un bon gifle).

Delisle laughed and answered: "Yes, I am in Rouget de Lisle's will and I get royalties every time they play the Marseillaise.

The writer Jean-Luc Gatellier said of Delisle that "he was a creative, a puncher-climber, a Manchot[12] who didn't lack the legs to push big gears, sitting on the nose of his upward-pointing saddle.

"[2][13] Arsène Maulave of the Belgian magazine, Coups de Pédale, wrote: Delisle won the Polymultipliée and a criterium at Lescouet-Jugon in his last season, 1977.

He also came ninth in the Tour de France and fifth in the season-long Prestige Pernod, forerunner of the World Cup.