The pioneering British road sprinter and Classics rider Barry Hoban has died at the age of 85. Hoban was for many years the UK record holder for stage wins in the Tour de France notching up a tally of eight during his 17-year professional racing career, a total bettered only by the greatest sprinter of them all, Mark Cavendish, in 2009.
Hoban’s first stage victory in the Tour, in 1967, was not one he cared to remember – or that he felt was really a win – as it came the day after the sudden death of his friend and rival Tom Simpson on Mont Ventoux; he was “permitted” to escape and cross the line first by the grieving peloton.
It emerged during research for Put Me Back on My Bike, my account of Simpson’s death, that Hoban was probably not the senior riders’ preferred choice on that emotionally charged day, creating an undercurrent of controversy that persisted for a quarter of a century.
Nonetheless, his close connection with Major Tom could never be in doubt; the pair had frequently crossed swords as amateurs and Hoban was eventually to marry Simpson’s widow Helen, with whom he moved to the Welsh hills near Newtown, Powys after many years spent in the Flemish city of Gent.
However, 12 months after Simpson’s death there was no argument about a solo “medium mountain” stage victory in the Alps at Sallanches which Hoban took in magnificently clear headed style – winning a cow named Estelle – and he added back to back stage wins at Bordeaux and Brive in 1969; Cavendish and Geraint Thomas remain the only other Britons to have taken two Tour stages in two days.
Hoban added further stage wins at Argèles-sur-Mer and Versailles in 1973, Montpellier in 1974 and Bordeaux in 1975, by which time he was on the way to completing 9 Tours; he would finish two more, a record bettered only by Thomas last July.
As well as his undoubted sprint skills – which brought him a brace of stage wins in the Vuelta a España in successive days in his first professional season, 1964 – Hoban’s clear head, ability to read a race and his encyclopaedic memory for race routes enabled him to race strongly in one-day Classics.
He landed the Grand Prix of Frankfurt in 1966 and won Ghent-Wevelgem in 1974 ahead of Eddy Merckx and Roger de Vlaeminck, the only British victory in the race’s history; his third place in Paris-Roubaix in 1972 was a British best, only matched by Roger Hammond in 2004, while his third in Liege-Bastogne-Liege has yet to be bettered by a Briton.
“The Grey Fox” as he was known later in his career, began racing in Yorkshire for the Calder Clarion cycling club, before heading to Northern France to race as an independent in 1962. He earned a contract with Raymond Poulidor’s Mercier-Hutchinson team in 1964 after winning 35 races in the lower tier of the sport, and stayed with the squad in its various incarnations until 1979 apart from a brief spell at Sonolor-Lejeune. In 1980, he retired to Newtown to head up the Coventry Eagle cycle company; later he worked for the cycle importer Yellow.
“He had incredible knowledge of a race,” said a Mercier insider, Guy Caput. “He was far more than a sprinter. His judgement on everything that went on in a race could be relied on absolutely. He was a professional from sunrise to sunset.”
He leaves his widow Helen, their daughter Danielle and his step daughters Jane and Joanne.