[11] In September 1969, a delegation from the newly formed Carrick Wheelers Road Club visited the Christian Brothers Secondary School, where Joe was a student.

[11] Kelly won stage 7 of the 1975 Tour of Britain, beating Swede Bernt Johansson and Polish rider Jan Trybala in a three-way sprint.

[11][23] In August 1975, Alain Steinhoff, a member of the Metz club,[22] travelled to the World Championships in Belgium, where Kelly was competing in the amateur road race.

[25] Club Metz heard nothing from Kelly during the winter because his focus of attention shifted to competing in the Rapport Toer stage race in South Africa as preparation for the 1976 Olympic Games.

[25] In late September 1975, Kelly and two other Irish riders, Pat and Kieron McQuaid went to South Africa to participate in the Rapport Toer stage race in preparation for the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, Canada.

[n 2][29] When the Irish Cycling Federation received news of their escapades in South Africa, Kelly and the McQuaids incurred a seven-month suspension from racing,[30] reduced after an appeal to six months.

[37] With the dream of competing at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal now shattered, Kelly suddenly required an alternative plan for the rest of the summer to fill the gut-wrenching void.

[25] Soon after arriving, his motivation grew when he learned Velo Club Metz had an arrangement that a rider would pocket four francs a kilometre for every race won.

[25] During the five months he spent with Velo Club Metz, Kelly was victorious in eighteen of the twenty-five races he started, including his most prestigious win, the Piccolo Giro di Lombardia in Italy.

[41] During Kelly's stint with Velo Club Metz in the 1976 season, an impressive stage win at the Tour de Haute-Marne in Northeastern France caught the attention of Jean-Pierre Douçot.

[42] Jean-Pierre informed Jean de Gribaldy, a directeur sportif from Besançon who was putting together a French squad for the Belgian professional team, Flandria–Velda–Latina Assicurazioni, of Kelly's potential.

[42] Later, Kelly's win at the end of the season on 2 October 1976 in the Piccolo Giro di Lombardia[25] left an indelible impression, which convinced de Gribaldy to act upon Douçot's earlier recommendation.

[41][43] Onboard was directeur sportif Jean de Gribaldy, pilot Bernard Dagot and a youthful French amateur cyclist, Noël Converset.

[41][44] Dagot, Chief Air Traffic Controller at Dole Airport, spoke fluent English and his linguistic skills earned him the role of an interpreter.

[53] Guillaume Driessens was the directeur sportif of the Flandria team, one of the world's best, with riders such as Freddy Maertens, Marc Demeyer and Michel Pollentier among their ranks.

[53] Flandria required a French squad to expand its commercial interests in France, so they hired Jean de Gribaldy to assemble and direct a new team.

[63] On 11 May 1977, competing with the French squad, Kelly won the first stage of the Tour de Romandie in Switzerland and finished tenth overall in the final general classification.

Years later Kelly admitted that his countryman Roche's emergence during his neo-pro season in 1981, during which he had also won Paris–Nice, was one of the factors which motivated him to adjust his focus to becoming more of an all-round rider.

Kelly wore the yellow jersey in the 1983 Tour de France for one day, during the mountainous stage 10 from Pau to Bagnères-de-Luchon, which included the Pyrenean climbs, the Aubisque, Tourmalet, Aspin and Peyresourde.

Kelly won the sprint to take his first Monument by the narrowest margin, less than half a wheel separating the first four, against cycling greats including Francesco Moser, Adri van der Poel, Hennie Kuiper and World Champion Greg LeMond.

According to his autobiography Hunger, Kelly gave his support to Van der Poel in the latter's bid to win Flanders in exchange for the Dutchman's help in the French cobbled Classic.

However, on the Spanish mainland, Kelly concentrated on winning sprint time bonuses, battling with sprinter Manuel Jorge Domínguez, the BH teammate of leader, Laudelino Cubino.

The same year he won the points classification in the Tour de France for the fourth time and the inaugural UCI Road World Cup championship.

"[100][101] In August 1991, Kelly abandoned his racing schedule to participate in the Tour of Galicia after his brother Joe was tragically killed in the Comeragh 100 near Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary.

Eddy Merckx, Laurent Fignon, Bernard Hinault, Roger De Vlaeminck, Claude Criquielion, Stephen Roche, Martin Earley, Acácio da Silva and Paul Kimmage were among 1,200 cyclists present.

Kelly's career coincided with Stephen Roche as well as Classics specialists including Francesco Moser, Claude Criquielion, Moreno Argentin and Eric Vanderaerden.

Kelly had all this in him from his Irish small-farm background: the outside loo; the dogs that have to be chained before you can step from your car; the one career possible, as a bricklayer on a construction site, stretching away and away into the grey mists.

In the inaugural 1985 Nissan Classic, Kelly, wearing a skinsuit, racing a Vitus Plus Carbone road bike with drop handlebars and a rear Mavic disc wheel, produced a magnificent performance in the stage 3a, 21 km (13.04 mi) individual time trial from Carrick-on-Suir to Clonmel.

It took another four years to surpass this record when American Greg LeMond averaged 54.545 km/h (33.893 mi/h) in the historical 24.5 km (15.22 mi) individual time trial from Versailles to Paris at the 1989 Tour de France.

Kelly denied taking any banned substances: in an interview at the time with David Walsh, he claimed that there were "irregularities at the testing centre that day ... the medical control at Paris-Brussels was very badly organised and lots of people were in the room who had no right to be there ... in all this confusion something must have gone wrong".