Vin Denson, who has died aged 90, was a cyclist who was the first Briton to win a stage of the Giro D’Italia, one of the sport’s big three races, and who rode the biggest of them all, the Tour de France, six times; he was a close friend of his ill-starred compatriot, Tom Simpson, and a valued teammate of the great Jacques Anquetil.

He was one of the first generation of British cyclists who realised that to mix it with the continental big boys they would have to cross the Channel and start from the bottom. He was the first Briton to make a living as a domestique – those who ride in the service of their team leader.

During the 1967 Tour de France he was in the Great Britain team led by Simpson. Stage 13, from Marseille to Carpentras, took in the legendary summit of Mont Ventoux, with its lunar landscape and punishing slopes.

As usual, Denson had worked hard to put Simpson in a strong position, and on Mont Ventoux the team leader was getting ready to leave his most trusted domestique in his wake and power away in pursuit of a possible victory, Denson recalled.

“I shouted, ‘Die! Die!’ ” he told the Telegraph in 2017. “Christ, it was just a figure of speech. If I had known what would happen…”

Denson next saw Simpson prostrate by the roadside. “I pushed through the crowd,” he recalled. “He looked a bit of a sad case. Eyes were glazed, on his back. He looked to be staring right through people. But he had his oxygen mask. The doctor was there in seconds so I thought they had saved him.”

Denson wanted to stay with Simpson but their manager Alex Taylor, wanting to limit the team’s losses, told him to get back on his bike. As he neared the top of Ventoux he saw the helicopter taking Simpson away, thinking that he would tell him off later on for ruining the team’s campaign and cutting their earnings.

“I thought, silly b-----,” he recalled. “He’ll spend a night in hospital and be fine, and we’re going to lose out.” But when he got back to the team hotel he was told that his friend had died.

Denson wanted the team to quit the race but was outvoted by his colleagues. The following day the plan in the peloton was for Denson to be allowed to win the stage, though in the event Barry Hoban took the victory, crossing the line in tears.

Denson was badly affected by his friend’s death and pulled out of the race a few days later: “I kept mistaking other riders for Tom,” he told the Telegraph. “It was like I was hallucinating. I couldn’t take it any more. Just undid my straps and got into the team car.”

Vincent Denson was born on November 24 1935 in Chester. His love of cycling began at secondary school, when his French teacher would show his pupils photos of riders in the Tour de France. He was a promising young footballer, turning out for Chester Schoolboys, but when he was hampered by a recurring cartilage problem, doctors advised him to take up cycling instead, and he began racing for Chester Road Club.

In 1961 he decided to try to make it as a professional. He sold his house in England and most of his belongings and moved to France with his wife Vi, who was expecting their first child. “I am not sure if we realised then what a gamble we were taking,” he said in later life. “I only knew that I would never be fully content if I hadn’t at least given it a go.”

He arrived in Troyes with his fellow Brit, Alan Ramsbottom, to join the UV Aube amateur outfit, and rode in the 1961 Tour de France in the British team, alongside Simpson. He made it to the 17th of 21 stages but was forced out by a stomach bug that he had probably caught after filling his water bottle from a roadside spring.

In 1962 he turned pro with the Pelforth team, then two years later rode his second Tour, as a domestique in the Belgian Solo-Superia team led by “the Emperor”, Rik Van Looy.

“You rode for Van Looy and did whatever he wanted, including the fetching of beers, which he had a great fondness for in mid-race,” Denson recalled. “Domestiques were reduced to chasing long miles to bring the great man a bottle of Stella.”

On the seventh stage he led a breakaway that broke up the field, but was beaten into third place at the line.

Denson became a popular figure in France – where he was known as “Vic”, as “Vin” is French for wine – and went on to write a column for the sports newspaper L’Equipe.

In 1965 he won the Tour de Luxembourg, took a stage of the Dunkirk Four Days endurance race and was part of Britain’s World Cup-winning road team, with Simpson taking the victory. That year he joined Jacques Anquetil, five-times Tour champion, in the Ford-France team, who were nicknamed “l’equipe de rugbymen” as they were all big lads.

Denson was at the height of his powers as a domestique. “When you raced for Ford-France with Jacques at the head, it was like a footballer must feel playing for Manchester United,” he recalled a few years ago. “You were in the No 1 team with the best rider in the world at the time.”

He would often go on “raids” for Anquetil, riding ahead to ransack bars and cafés for drinks – usually alcoholic. “All the local journalists would be there taking pictures of you. Some of the landlords complained, but most loved it because they were all taking pictures of their cafe, which would be in the papers.”

In 1966 Denson shone on his own behalf, making history when he became the first Briton to win a stage of the Giro d’Italia, from Naples to Campobasso. The previous evening, at the team hotel, he had joked to his teammate Raphaël Geminiani that if the Italian would get him another plate of pasta he would win the following day.

On the stage, he got himself into a breakaway, but on the final climb, he recalled, “My legs were nearly breaking and I was tempted to get back into the saddle and change down to a lower gear. But I thought about the kids back home and said to myself: ‘Come on, Vin, you’ve got to do it for them.’”

He duly won by 44 seconds. Reporters heard about the story of Geminiani and the plate of pasta, and the next day’s Gazzetta dello Sport carried the headline “La droga de Denson è un piatto di ravioli”, or “Denson’s drug is a plate of ravioli”.

In 1967 came the death of his friend Tom Simpson, whom he had known since the mid-1950s, when they trained together in Yorkshire while Denson was doing his National Service. They had gone on to live near each other in Belgium, and their families had become close. “He was like a brother to me,” said Denson – and when he pulled out of the Tour de France a few days after, he intended it to be his last day in cycling.

He went on to run a bar in Belgium, but was persuaded to get back on his bike by the Italian Kelvinator team, and in 1968 he helped Barry Hoban win a celebrated epic Tour stage win in the mountains.

At the end of that season, Denson, his wife Vi and their daughter and two sons returned to England, settling in Essex, where Denson set up a wood treatment business. A member of the Harlow cycling club, in 1969 Denson turned his attention to the campaign to build a velodrome in the town. It opened in 1976, but it was closed, and the site sold off, in 1995. Plans to build a new indoor venue never materialised.

He was a club cyclist for several years, and in the late 1990s he won bronze in his age category in the individual pursuit at the World Masters Track Championships. He remained an immensely popular figure on the British cycling scene, and in 2008 he published an autobiography, The Full Cycle.

Denson’s wife Vi died in 1996.