Graham Webb

In 2009, he was inducted into the British Cycling Hall of Fame.

In 2007, Webb was acknowledged by his home town, Birmingham, on the birmingham.gov.uk web site, as a famous 'Brummie'.

Webb turned professional in 1968 for the Mercier team which included Raymond Poulidor and another French star, Jean Stablinski, although things started going wrong from the moment a shipping strike stranded him in Sardinia, where he had been training, forcing him to miss the team's first race. On his return home to Belgium, his racing equipment was stolen from his car, which was parked at the time in the center of Turin, Italy. This was only two days before his first professional race, the then classic Omloop Het Volk. 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.

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. After that he began winning regularly, often lapping the field several times at criteriums.

Webb's attempts at the World Track Championship in 1967 came to nothing. He trained between 200 and 300 kilometres a day for the World Road Race Championship which followed a week later. Webb got into the important breakaway in this race but dropped back to help a fellow British rider, Peter Buckley, up to the front, on his return to the front of the race Webb discovered that a handful of riders had broken away. 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.

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. The 10-mile record had never previously been set during an hour record attempt; spectators were shouting at Webb to "slow down, you'll not last the distance at that speed!". Webb took no notice and went on to beat the old hour record by approximately 400 metres. His new record remained unbeaten for many years.

Graham Paul Webb (13 January 1944 – 28 May 2017) was an English racing cyclist who became the world amateur road race champion in 1967. In response to a journalist's shouted comment that the last British amateur world road champion had been Dave Marsh 45 years earlier, Webb retorted: "And they'll have to wait another 45 years before another British rider wins." Not only did no British man win a world road race championship in the following 45 years, but none can now win the amateur championship as the segregation between amateur and professional cycling no longer exists.

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 was given the last rites twice as a child before gaining his health.