Daan de Groot

Daniel Daan de Groot (25 May 1933 to 8 January 1982) was a Dutch road and track cyclist who represented the Netherlands at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, where he rode the 4,000 metre team pursuit alongside Adrie Voorting, Jan Plantaz and Jules Maenen and was eliminated in the quarterfinals. He turned professional on the road in 1954 and stayed in the paid ranks until 1962. He is best remembered for the thirteenth stage of the 1955 Tour de France, when he was dropped in the heat, cooled himself with cabbage leaves taken from a field, rejoined the peloton and then escaped alone. Told he led by treize minutes, he misheard it as three, rode harder and won the stage by more than twenty minutes. His sister Jannie swam for the Netherlands at the 1948 Olympics.