One-day races and Classics Seamus "Shay" Elliott (4 June 1934 – 4 May 1971) was an Irish road bicycle racer, Ireland's first major international rider, with a record comparable only to Sean Kelly and Stephen Roche.

[1] After a strong amateur period, primarily with the Dublin Wheelers, Elliott was the first Irish cyclist to make a mark as a professional rider in continental Europe.

He came second in his first race, riding a "scrap" bike with a single fixed wheel that led his pedals to bang the road on corners.

Elliott joined the Southern Road Club when he was 17 and, on a racing bike, won the Grand Prix of Ireland run over 50 km in the Phoenix Park.

That summer he won the Mannin Veg, a race over one lap of the TT motorcycling circuit on the Isle of Man.

His King of the Mountains placing in the Tour of Ireland in 1954 earned him a trip to the Simplex training camp in Monte Carlo the following spring.

But I can hardly forget that one whole compartment in the chest of drawers was devoted to provisions which Shay had brought from Ireland, the chief stock being 2lb [1kg] of tea and 2lb of chocolate creams.

He said that Elliott was one of several riders asked to strip for examination by the soigneur Raymond Le Bert, who normally worked for Louison Bobet.

He had just finished six years as an apprentice sheet-metal worker and he and his family in Old County Road in Crumlin, had decided that he had mastered panel-beating and would have a trade to return to if his efforts to become a professional cyclist failed.

Elliott planned to move to Ghent in Belgium, where he could race several times a week and, as an amateur, win money denied to him in Ireland.

Leulliot asked in his paper for someone to accommodate Elliott in the capital and added "The Irishman is soaked with class and has a great future before him."

The appeal was answered by Paul Wiegant of the Athletic Club Boulogne-Billancourt (ACBB) in Paris, France's top amateur team.

In his first major race of 1957, the Omloop "Het Volk" in Belgium, he made a race-long break with Englishman Brian Robinson.

Elliott remained with Robinson, chivvying him, pacing him, pouring water on his head as the Tour's doctor, Pierre Dumas administered glucose tablets.

Robinson en perdition ran the next day's headline in L'Équipe, which described Elliott's efforts as "attentions de mère poule" – the solicitousness of a mother hen.

[1] In 1962, he came third in the 1962 Vuelta a España, coming second in the points classification, and winning the fourth stage; he led the race for nine days.

"Team loyalty was a theme that ran throughout Elliott's career," noted the editor of Cycling, Martin Ayres.

[citation needed] Another rider in the race, Pete Ryalls, said in Procycling in 2008: The fix was for Barry Hoban to win.

[9] Elliott returned to Dublin in 1967 and set up a metal-working business in Prince's Street in the city centre,[1] with his father.

Despite problems, he continued to ride – he was active with the Bray Wheelers club based south of Dublin, training juniors and formulating plans for Irish cycling.

[1] Two weeks after his father's death,[7] on 4 May 1971, Shay Elliott was found dead in the living quarters above the family business premises, at the age of just 36.

The cause of death was a shotgun wound, rupturing his heart and liver,[1] from a gun about whose unreliable fittings friends had warned him.

The coroner recorded an "open verdict" and three competing theories circulated about the cause of death: that it was indeed a gun accident,[1] that he committed suicide,[1] and that he was killed by a Breton crime syndicate to whom he owed money from his failed hotel business[2] (he had worried about people "hanging round" near the premises in previous weeks).

The Shay Elliott Memorial Road Race, organised by Bray Wheelers Cycling Club, is run every year in Ireland in his honour.

A monument to Elliott, erected by friends and Bray Wheelers Cycling Club, stands at the top of the climb from Drumgoff Bridge, Glenmalure heading towards Laragh, County Wicklow, where the race's KOH mountain prime is situated.