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Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Barry Hoban obituary
Barry Hoban during the third stage of the Tour de France, 1968. Photograph: AgenceBarry Hoban, who has died aged 85, was one of the first generation of British cyclists to make a mark in European professional cycling, a prolific sprint winner whose UK record of eight stage wins in the Tour de France stood for 34 years until the greatest sprinter of them all, Mark Cavendish, reached his peak. His record of 11 Tour finishes from 12 starts stood until 2024 when it was eclipsed by Geraint Thomas. Advertisement Hoban's life was intimately entwined with that of the British star Tom Simpson, who died on the Tour in 1967; like Simpson he was based in Ghent, in Belgium, he married Simpson's widow Helen, and the complex resonances of Simpson's tragic demise remained with the couple decades later. Hoban was more than just a sprinter when it came to racing. He was a clear-headed tactician – lucide, as the French cycling slang has it – and had a photographic memory for race locations. He was a natural for cycling's one-day classics, where tactical nous and knowledge of the race routes is a sine qua non. His best classic performance, a win in the 1974 Ghent-Wevelgem ahead of Roger de Vlaeminck and Eddy Merckx, has never been equalled by a Briton, nor has his 1966 win in the GP Frankfurt. Barry was born into a mining family in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, one of five children, and followed his father Paddy – a bricklayer in the local colliery – down the pit, after leaving school aged 15. The family were Catholic, which, Hoban said later, set them apart somewhat. He used his father's old kit to begin racing with the local Calder Clarion cycling club, and by the age of 17 he had begun to model himself on Simpson, his senior by two years; he raced for Great Britain at the 1960 Rome Olympics and then moved to northern France to race as an independent – the now defunct category halfway between professional and amateur. Thirty five race wins in two years earned him a place in the Mercier team, led by Raymond Poulidor. In his first professional season, 1964, Hoban set himself a target: to make £1,000. He showed early promise, taking two stage wins in two days in the Tour of Spain and then came within a few yards of winning a Tour de France stage at Bordeaux. In a more enlightened team that might have earned him preferential treatment, but the Mercier manager Antonin Magne had eyes only for Poulidor. Advertisement Hoban did not consider his first Tour stage win a real victory; it came the day after Simpson's death on Mont Ventoux, when the senior riders in the peloton decreed that a British teammate of 'Major Tom' should cross the line first. The precise circumstances of the stage were still being argued over 40 years later; one of the 'heads', Jean Stablinski, told me the agreement had been for Vin Denson, Simpson's closest friend, to take the win, but it was Hoban who rode away, and, as their team mate Arthur Metcalfe related before his death: 'Vin wasn't in a fit state [emotionally] to do it. Barry was a young, ambitious pro, and obviously a win is a win.' A year later, Hoban took the Tour stage he really wanted: a solo victory in the Alps at Sallanches after a 75-mile escape through the Alps; among the prizes was a cow named Estelle. His tactical cunning and lucidité won him back to back stages in 1969, after he had the nous to forge brief circumstantial alliances with other riders in breakaways, and his sprint did the rest. His tactical acumen contributed to his stage wins at Versailles in 1973, where he was the only sprinter to read a technical finish correctly, and at Montpellier in 1974, where he was the one who recalled a corner 350m from the line. His final stage win, in 1975, at Bordeaux, came on one of the last occasions a Tour stage finished on a banked velodrome and relied on the track craft initially honed on cinder and grass tracks in Yorkshire 20 years earlier. If Hoban ended his career with any regrets, they centred on relations with the cycling establishment in the UK. He never saw eye to eye with the small group of racers who then made a living racing the domestic calendar; in 1979, he was involved in a controversial finish to the UK national championship, when he was disqualified after judges ruled he had sprinted improperly against the best domestic racer of the time, Sid Barras. Hoban's application to become national coach was turned down, and he – rightly – felt he never achieved the recognition his achievements deserved. Hoban took his last European win in a stage of the Four Days of Dunkirk in 1978, beating the best sprinter of the time, Freddy Maertens after having the foresight to fit a larger gear than usual for a tailwind finish. He completed his final Tour that year aged 38, and retired in 1980 after 19 seasons racing full-time, the last for the Falcon team in the UK; he later moved to Newton, Powys, to work for a bike-maker producing Barry Hoban bikes. To emphasise the Simpson connection, a portrait of his former friend and rival hung in the reception area. He is survived by Helen, their daughter Daniella, his stepdaughters Jane and Joanne Simpson, and a brother and sister. • Barry Hoban, professional cyclist, born 5 February 1940; died 20 April 2025
The Guardian
22-04-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
Barry Hoban obituary
Barry Hoban, who has died aged 85, was one of the first generation of British cyclists to make a mark in European professional cycling, a prolific sprint winner whose UK record of eight stage wins in the Tour de France stood for 34 years until the greatest sprinter of them all, Mark Cavendish, reached his peak. His record of 11 Tour finishes from 12 starts stood until 2024 when it was eclipsed by Geraint Thomas. Hoban's life was intimately entwined with that of the British star Tom Simpson, who died on the Tour in 1967; like Simpson he was based in Ghent, in Belgium, he married Simpson's widow Helen, and the complex resonances of Simpson's tragic demise remained with the couple decades later. Hoban was more than just a sprinter when it came to racing. He was a clear-headed tactician – lucide, as the French cycling slang has it – and had a photographic memory for race locations. He was a natural for cycling's one-day classics, where tactical nous and knowledge of the race routes is a sine qua non. His best classic performance, a win in the 1974 Ghent-Wevelgem ahead of Roger de Vlaeminck and Eddy Merckx, has never been equalled by a Briton, nor has his 1966 win in the GP Frankfurt. Barry was born into a mining family in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, one of five children, and followed his father Paddy – a bricklayer in the local colliery – down the pit, after leaving school aged 15. The family were Catholic, which, Hoban said later, set them apart somewhat. He used his father's old kit to begin racing with the local Calder Clarion cycling club, and by the age of 17 he had begun to model himself on Simpson, his senior by two years; he raced for Great Britain at the 1960 Rome Olympics and then moved to northern France to race as an independent – the now defunct category halfway between professional and amateur. Thirty five race wins in two years earned him a place in the Mercier team, led by Raymond Poulidor. In his first professional season, 1964, Hoban set himself a target: to make £1,000. He showed early promise, taking two stage wins in two days in the Tour of Spain and then came within a few yards of winning a Tour de France stage at Bordeaux. In a more enlightened team that might have earned him preferential treatment, but the Mercier manager Antonin Magne had eyes only for Poulidor. Hoban did not consider his first Tour stage win a real victory; it came the day after Simpson's death on Mont Ventoux, when the senior riders in the peloton decreed that a British teammate of 'Major Tom' should cross the line first. The precise circumstances of the stage were still being argued over 40 years later; one of the 'heads', Jean Stablinski, told me the agreement had been for Vin Denson, Simpson's closest friend, to take the win, but it was Hoban who rode away, and, as their team mate Arthur Metcalfe related before his death: 'Vin wasn't in a fit state [emotionally] to do it. Barry was a young, ambitious pro, and obviously a win is a win.' A year later, Hoban took the Tour stage he really wanted: a solo victory in the Alps at Sallanches after a 75-mile escape through the Alps; among the prizes was a cow named Estelle. His tactical cunning and lucidité won him back to back stages in 1969, after he had the nous to forge brief circumstantial alliances with other riders in breakaways, and his sprint did the rest. His tactical acumen contributed to his stage wins at Versailles in 1973, where he was the only sprinter to read a technical finish correctly, and at Montpellier in 1974, where he was the one who recalled a corner 350m from the line. His final stage win, in 1975, at Bordeaux, came on one of the last occasions a Tour stage finished on a banked velodrome and relied on the track craft initially honed on cinder and grass tracks in Yorkshire 20 years earlier. If Hoban ended his career with any regrets, they centred on relations with the cycling establishment in the UK. He never saw eye to eye with the small group of racers who then made a living racing the domestic calendar; in 1979, he was involved in a controversial finish to the UK national championship, when he was disqualified after judges ruled he had sprinted improperly against the best domestic racer of the time, Sid Barras. Hoban's application to become national coach was turned down, and he – rightly – felt he never achieved the recognition his achievements deserved. Hoban took his last European win in a stage of the Four Days of Dunkirk in 1978, beating the best sprinter of the time, Freddy Maertens after having the foresight to fit a larger gear than usual for a tailwind finish. He completed his final Tour that year aged 38, and retired in 1980 after 19 seasons racing full-time, the last for the Falcon team in the UK; he later moved to Newton, Powys, to work for a bike-maker producing Barry Hoban bikes. To emphasise the Simpson connection, a portrait of his former friend and rival hung in the reception area. He is survived by Helen, their daughter Daniella, his stepdaughters Jane and Joanne Simpson, and a brother and sister. Barry Hoban, professional cyclist, born 5 February 1940; died 20 April 2025
Times
21-04-2025
- Sport
- Times
Barry Hoban blazed trail before British cycling's boom years
For 34 years, Barry Hoban was Britain's most prolific stage-winner at the Tour de France. He won sprints, he won in the low Alps and the last of his eight victories, at Bordeaux in 1975, with the great Francesco Moser two places behind him, came eight years after his first. Considering the circumstances of that first victory, though, Hoban — who died on Sunday, aged 85 — might have been forgiven for turning his back on the race altogether. The 1967 Tour de France has a morbid place in cycling history. On the 13th stage from Marseille to Carpentras, Tom Simpson — a winner of Il Lombardia, Milan-San Remo and the Tour of Flanders, at that point Britain's pre-eminent cyclist — died near the summit of Mont Ventoux. Simpson was competing in an era when water intake was restricted and alcohol pilfered from local bars because, by a certain point, it was the only liquid going. Riders would inject morphine directly into their legs to dull the pain of racing, take amphetamines to counteract the soporific force of the morphine and then sleeping pills to come down from it all at the end of the day. His death was the beginning of cycling's long reckoning with drugs. And in the grief and shock of its immediate aftermath, Hoban — who later married Simpson's widow, Helen, and was stepfather to his daughters, Jane and Joanne — was the man required to pay homage. The 1967 Tour was ridden in national teams — rather than trade, as it is now — and there is some debate as to whether Hoban or Vin Denson, another of Simpson's team-mates, was the peloton's original nominee for victory on the 14th stage to Sète. But that is what happened: Hoban was allowed to escape and to claim a peculiar and painful victory. Thereafter, though, he won regularly and free from the caveat of tragedy. In a 17-year professional career, he won 27 races, eight of which were stages of the Tour de France, a mark only surpassed by Mark Cavendish in 2009. He is one of only three Britons — including Cavendish and Geraint Thomas — to have won consecutive stages at the race. In 1968, he claimed the 19th stage to Sallanches, a 200km course with more than 5,000m of ascent, and received a cow named Estelle as prize. 'What are you going to do with it?' Hoban was asked at the finish. 'Jump on its back,' he replied. Instead, he is reported to have given the heifer to a local farmer and kept her bell as souvenir. A contemporary report from The Guardian described it as 'the fifth and finest stage victory ever achieved by a Briton' at the Tour. 'It was in the mountains, which is every rider's ambition; it was with an uncompromising lead of four minutes; it was after a solitary ride of 73 miles.' Raised near Wakefield, he would show off to his friends by keeping pace with the bus along the four-mile route to school and he honed his talents at the Calder Clarion club. To begin with, his gift was for sprinting. 'I knew I could always sprint,' he told Cycling Weekly in 2020. '[But] in Yorkshire if you couldn't climb a hill you couldn't ride a race. Because the races all went up hills. And of course . . . at the end of the season, there were hill-climbs. I won hill-climbs up the Old Chevin, up Holme Moss, so I realised I could climb. I could sprint. I was pretty good on the track. I was British national pursuit champion twice. I was a very good all-round rider.' A team-mate of the Frenchman Raymond Poulidor at Gan-Mercier for much of his career, he beat Eddy Merckx to win Gent-Wevelgem in 1974. He was convinced, though, that his best ride was at Paris-Roubaix, where he finished third in 1972. 'I was right up there with everyone. [Eddy] Merckx, [Roger] De Vlaeminck, [Eric] Leman, all the top-notch riders going through the Arenberg Forest,' he said. 'You never want to puncture in the Arenberg — I did. I lost two minutes before a team-mate gave me his wheel. I went, and I rode. Boy — I was passing people as though they were stopped.' Until he needed to replace his rear wheel. 'I put my arm in the air, the team car screeched to a halt, I got a back wheel. So I had another chase again. By the time I got back, De Vlaeminck had gone. 'I know perfectly well, that day, without that puncture, it would have been a different story. I probably spent about 50k of that race chasing to get back on — I still finished third.' Hoban was the only British rider to finish Paris-Roubaix in 1972. This year, there were 12. A record 34 are spread across World Tour teams this season. British cycling has certainly had boom years since but it owes a lot, too, to Hogan and the legacy of his buckled wheel.
The Guardian
20-04-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
Barry Hoban, British cycling legend and Tour de France icon, dies aged 85
Barry Hoban, the British cycling Icon and eight-time Tour de France stage winner has died aged 85. Hoban was a pioneer of cycling in the UK in the 1960s and 70s and blazed a trail for cyclists such as Mark Cavendish and Geraint Thomas. Born in 1940 in Wakefield, Yorkshire, Hoban cut his teeth for local cycling club Calder Clarion as a sprinter before realising he had a particular aptitude for climbing. He turned professional in the 1960s and spent 19 years on the circuit. Hoban remains the only British male rider to win Belgian's renowned Gent-Wevelgem when he triumphed on the course's infamous cobbles and climbs in 1974. Britain's Lizzie Deignan later won the inaugural women's version in 2012. Until Mark Cavendish eventually surpassed him in 2009, Hoban held the record for the most Tours de France completed by a British rider. He finished 11 of the 12 Tours he competed in, another British cycling record that Hoban held until recently with Geraint Thomas finishing his 12th tour last year. The Welshman might have more in the saddle but the Yorkshireman can lay claim to being the first British rider to win a Tour de France mountain stage and the first to win two Tour stages consecutively. Hoban was great friends with Tom Simpson and his first Tour stage win in 1967 was a tribute to Britain's first world champion cyclist who died after collapsing on Mont Ventoux. In emotional scenes, Hoban was allowed to complete the stage as a solo rider in tribute the day after Simpson's death. Hoban spent the majority of his seasons racing for Mercier-BP-Hutchinson, with teammates including fellow cycling greats Cyrille Guimard and Raymond Poulidor. He is survived by his wife Helen, daughter Daniella and step-daughters Jane and Joanne Simpson.
