Barry Hoban Obituary

Peter Barry Hoban has died at the age of 85. One of the pioneering British cyclists, he made a name for himself in Europe with eight Tour de France stages, Gent-Wevelgem and more which made him arguably Britain’s best cyclist until the likes of Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish surpassed his achievements.

Born in Wakefield in England in 1940, Hoban was one of five children in a cycling family and found a frame and parts in his father Patrick’s shed to build a fixed wheel bike. He joined his first club in 1954 and began racing the following year. As well as insisting on riding to school, he began racing on grass tracks and in the prolific time trial scene, an era when road racing was near-prohibited on British roads.

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Hoban took inspiration from the road, he read of fellow Yorkshireman Brian Robinson (pictured) becoming the first Briton to win a stage of the Tour de France and told the Velo101 website he fancied some of this.

As author William Fotheringham writes in Roule Britannia – which has a Chapter dedicated to “the Grey Fox” – he even persuaded his Calder Clarion cycling club to put a stitched panel on the front of the jersey saying “Calder” to resemble a continental racing jersey, and got his mother to embroider his shorts to further the look.

The combination of time trials and track racing including the British pursuit title led him to the Rome Olympics where he was part of the team pursuit. He might have been too strong for the British team, at least he told Cycling at the time, shouting he was going to do a long turn and this effort sapped his team mates such that they struggled to follow. All this was a way out of his electrician’s apprenticeship.

Inspired by Tom Simpson, two years his elder, Hoban headed for France. He spent two seasons as an indépendant, a semi-professional, with André Bertin’s team in northern France. Bertin was an ex-pro making bikes and gave the right riders a bike and pay in exchange for publicity. Hoban told Cyclist magazine he ate countless omelettes because it was one of the few dishes he could recognise on a menu.

Helped by a second place in the Tour de l’Avenir’s time trial stage and a good word from a journalist, he signed for the Mercier-BP team for 1964 led by Antonin Magne, the superstitious smok-wearing manager who kept a pendulum in his pocket to dowse rider ability.

Success came early, two stage wins in the Vuelta that spring from breakaways, after helping his team leader Raymond Poulidor to the overall win while team mate Frans Melckenbeeck also got three stages in the sprints. A stage in the GP du Midi-Libre soon after and then he rode his first Tour de France as a neo-pro where he finished second on one stage to André Darrigade, one of the all-time best sprinters but then aged 35 and apparently benefiting from a helpful handsling.

Hoban’s team leader Poulidor also made his Tour debut and finished a promising third overall. The two were friends, often rooming together. Fluent in French, Tour de France historian Jacques Augendre wrote Hoban was “the most French of the English”, even mastering Parisian slang; for Fotheringham this was more because Hoban had learned colloquial French from his peers rather out of a textbook.

Whether second placed or not, Poulidor often finished ahead of the two so Hoban joked he could count a freshly brewed pot of tea and ready-buttered slices of toast in the hotel room. This was the ready supply of stereotypes for French media in an era where an Englishman in the peloton was rare; think of Tom Simpson posing in a bowler hat with an umbrella.

Indeed in the 1964 Tour de France every starter either came from France, a country bordering France or the Netherlands, except for Britons Hoban, Tom Simpson and Michael Wright, plus Irishman Shay Elliot; and Wright didn’t speak English having grown up in Belgium. Only one British journalist, John Wadley, covered the Tour de France.

In 1965 Hoban was instrumental in chasing down the breakaway in the World Championships so Simpson could win. Both lived near Gent in Belgium, and as Fotheringham writes Hoban would often visit Simpson’s home.

1966 saw the Poulidor vs. Anquetil rivalry reach a new intensity Paris-Nice when the Mercier and Ford teams clashed, to the point where it was alleged Anquetil’s Ford team mate Jean-Claude Wuillemin barged Hoban off the road, forcing the Briton to abandon the race. Hoban, by definition in the Poulidor camp, could see, and often did point out, the Frenchman’s mistakes.

In 1967 Hoban’s first Tour de France stage win was the one he least wanted. Tom Simpson had died on Mont Ventoux and the next day, after a minute’s silence at the start, the peloton agreed that a British rider would be allowed to win. Hoban said he got a gap at one point and then pressed on to win for Simpson, a moment appreciated by many at the time. He later said it was not even a victory, just a tribute.

Only his account was disputed later. Rather than continue in the race, some of the British riders wanted to go home as British team mate Vin Denson told Le Vif but Hoban wanted to stay. Acting as the elder statesman in the bunch, Jean Stablinski picked his Bic team mate Vin Denson to be the day’s winner and advised he should go clear with 20km left in the stage. Only Hoban pre-empted this. As Denson told Le Vif and also Fotheringham, Stablinski told him to chase but the British team could hardly be seen to ride down one of its own. A betrayal? Possibly and Denson says Hoban and not him got lucrative criterium invites but we can’t imagine Hoban’s state of mind the day after his idol, friend and neighbour had died; Hoban said he woke up in the night feeling as if it was all just a nightmare only to be confronted with the reality at dawn.

Later that year he finished second to Rik Van Looy in Paris-Tours, then a prime race and Hoban’s palmarès was growing. For all the wins and there were plenty, he would also have many places d’honneur like third in Paris-Roubaix and Liège-Bastogne-Liège and fifth in the Tour of Flanders too.

1968 Hoban took a mountain stage win in the Tour de France, a long solo raid over the Aravis and Colombière passes. The newsreel of the day says he went for the first intermediate sprint and then kept going, quickly building up a ten minute lead. But the next day’s L’Equipe also cites the Spanish team saying Hoban had asked for permission to go up the road in order to urinate, only to disappear for the day. Either way, he was first to the finish in Cordon and won a cow as a prize.

He was recognisable in the cycling press, a beaming smile with a mouth that looked like he could eat a whole croissant sideways. But no clown, and as the wins came more often and he was an established lieutenant who had the finishing speed to pick off wins but also an attention to detail, insisting on meticulously checking his bike and clothes prior to major objectives.

In 1969 Hoban took two consecutive Tour de France stages, a first since Fausto Coppi in 1952. He later credited some of this to his recovery powers:

“I soon found out I had an attribute which was paramount for a Tour de France rider. My recuperation was amazing. I could ride a stage, get smashed to smithereens, sleep the night, the following day I was brand new again… …I was wanting the Tour to go on another week”
Cycling Weeekly video interview, 2021, Youtube

In December that year he married Helen, Tom Simpson’s widow with whom he’d later have a daughter. A more private chapter of his life, Hoban took on a protective role for his two step children who grew to see him as their father.

In an interview with L’Equipe Joanne Simpson said at the time they were used to their father Tom’s long absences away at races and were never quite told he had died, to the point where a young Joanne asked her mother how she would explain the marriage to Hoban when Simpson eventually returned.

The new start also saw a change of team, leaving Magne for the Sonolor team in 1970. More wins came, like the Four Days of Dunkerque and the GP Fourmies.

In 1972 he rejoined Magne whose team had added insurer GAN as a new sponsor, and Bernard Sainz as a directeur sportif. Hoban was teaming up again with Raymond Poulidor but also Cyrille Guimard who briefly became a rival to Eddy Merckx at the Tour de France before a ruined knee forced him to concede, then quit.

In 1973 he took a stage in Bordeaux where L’Equipe’s Antoine Blondin deployed the line “Dernier Tango de Barry” riffing on a film title… only for Hoban with his recovery powers to win again in Versailles.

In 1974 Hoban won Gent-Wevelgem, beating Roger De Vlaeminck and Eddy Merckx. A memorable win, he could recount the moment in several interviews where a gap opened in the sprint and he went for it. This was also the year that the Tour de France made its first visit to Britain and Hoban was marked for the one stage to finish ninth; instead he won in Montpellier, then again the next year in Bordeaux and continued with the same team until the end of the decade at the age of 39, more than mature for a pro then.

Hoban moved back to Britain where he raced his last year as a pro in 1980 for the Falcon team. Then he worked in the cycle industry, promoting Hoban-branded Coventry Eagle bikes and later working for importers and distributors.

His 36 pros wins made Hoban one of the best British riders of the 20th century. Simpson had quality like the Worlds, later Robert Millar would shine in stage races but Hoban was the most prolific. This was a door-opener in the cycle trade “the cognoscenti knew who I was but nobody else did” he told Cyclist and this lament at the lack of wider recognition was something he mentioned several other times as he saw a new generation of British cyclists thrive and begin to overtake his achievements but this time in an era when their exploits were televised and they became household names.

“My one big regret is not the question of money, although I could have made a lot of money today, but the fact that I am not known for what I did over there. No one knows who the hell Barry Hoban was. It would be nice to be known for what I did for the sport, and not pushed into oblivion as if it didn’t count. When I go back to the Continent it’s like the return of the prodigal son. I go to the Ghent Six and straight away everyone says, “Ah, Barry’s here.” It’s a nice feeling.”
Barry Hoban, in “Roule Britannia” by William Fotheringham

When the Tour de France came to Hoban’s Yorkshire in 2014 a plaque was unveiled in Wakefield. “I reminded them it was 33 years since I stopped racing,” he told Cyclist, adding “but I’m grateful“.