IN 1975 Barry Hoban crossed the finish line at Bordeaux ahead of the lightning quick Belgian Rick van Linden to claim his eighth and final career stage win in the Tour de France.
Those eight wins comfortably earned Hoban the mantle of the most successful British Tour de France rider ever in terms of stage victories – a record he held on to until as recently as last year, when Mark Cavendish won the 19th stage of the 2009 Tour.
Hoban, now 70 and living in the hills outside Newtown, is undoubtedly one of the greatest British cyclists.
During an 18-year professional career, in which he competed against some of the finest riders in history, he won 21 races, including his eight Tour de France stages, the Ghent-Wevelgen Classic and two stages of the Tour of Spain.
Born in West Yorkshire in 1940, Hoban grew up as Britain was emerging from the traumatic aftermath of the Second World War.
His parents never owned a car and transport was limited to bus travel or bicycle. It was in those years growing up that Hoban cycled thousands of miles around Yorkshire and began what would become a lifetime’s love affair with cycling.
After leaving school at the age of 15, as was customary for most Britons in the 1950s, Hoban began work as an electrician and started competing in local cycle races.
“Everything is like climbing the pyramid,” he said, “you’re at the bottom of the pyramid and you slowly get up. I started racing and straight away I was pretty good at it and I started winning races as a junior.
"Then you became a senior, it took a little while to adapt and then I was winning again. You basically start off winning club championships, then you would be winning regional championships, then national championships, and eventually I went to the Olympics in 1960.”
Although the Olympics proved a disappointment, with the British Pursuit Team finishing way down the rankings, the success of another British cyclist in Europe persuaded him to try and make a career out of the sport.
He said: “At that particular time Tom Simpson was very successful on the continent and Tom was like two years older than me, but we were from a similar background and similar type of riders and I thought if he can do it, I can do it.”
So in 1962 Hoban packed his bags, gathered together £200 savings and got into his Morris Minor 1000 van to make his way to northern France.
When he arrived a letter of introduction to a manufacturer who sponsored clubs was enough to secure him a spot on an amateur team.
Hoban rode for the team for two years, in which time he enjoyed success, built up his reputation, and waited for his breakthrough. That breakthrough came courtesy of his performance in the 1963 Tour de l’Avenir (Tour of the Future – an amateur race over two weeks, which was held in conjunction with the Tour de France).
A 16th place finish and some impressive stage performances led the professional team Mercier-Hutchinson-BP to invite him to join as a full professional for 1964 – allowing him to fulfil his ambition of competing in the Tour de France.
Hoban had to wait until 1967 for his first stage win, although when it came there was little cause for celebration. The victory took place the day after the death of his friend the great British cyclist, Tom Simpson, on what is remembered as one of the darkest days in the history of the Tour de France.
The Englishman suffered a heart attack during stage 13 while ascending the slopes of the ferocious Mont Ventoux.
A combination of amphetamines, heat, a stomach complaint and alcohol had led to the cardiac arrest although Hoban says that with proper medical care at the scene, the tragic consequences could have been avoided.
He said: “Sadly when Tom had what was a complete collapsed cardiac, it happens reasonably frequently in hospitals, it’s not a situation that’s unsurmountable, but if there’s no facilities it’s unsurmountable.
“There are many people who say, and I agree with them even though I’m not a medical person, that they found Tom had taken amphetamines – amphetamines didn’t kill you. It was the situation you were in that killed you and unfortunately in those days the medical facilities were zilch, you had mouth-to-mouth resuscitation full stop. You had nothing. Nowadays they have everything.
“It’s the old saying, it takes a tragedy before something is done about it, and unfortunately that happens in many walks of life. The outcome of it all was Tom Simpson should never have died on that mountain, no matter what. With him collapsing like that he should never have died.”
The day after Simpson’s death the riders on the Tour decided the next stage should be won by a Briton as a tribute to their fallen colleague.
“My first win wasn’t a win as such,” Hoban said, “when Tom died everyone was hit by his death, and the following day the senior riders in the peloton said ‘look today in remembrance of Tom’, there was four of us left, four of us left in the team, ‘one of you guys has got to win’.
“You can imagine you’ve had a cycle race and some guy who is loved by everyone had died the previous day so there was no enthusiasm to race at all in any case, none whatsoever, no interest. And it was a lethargic ride from Avignon to Sete.
“Towards the end of it we were just riding along, it was like subdued conversations and I was at the front. Suddenly I looked behind and there was no-one there.
"One of the motorbike riders came along and said ‘okay, the boys say just continue to the finish like that Barry’. Which is what I did and it was more of a remembrance stage for Tom.”
What Hoban counts as his first proper stage win took place the following year on Stage 19 – Grenoble to Sallanches. What made the victory all the more memorable was the nature of the stage. Hoban had generally been recognised for his prowess as a sprinter yet the Grenoble to Sallanches stage took place over three of the tour’s most punishing mountain slopes.
He said: “My first real stage win was in 1968, which was a mountain stage, and it’s the only mountain stage that an Englishman has won.
"Subsequently Robert Millar, a Scot, won a few mountain stages but that was the first mountain stage that a Briton ever won. And that was in the Alps and I was away on my own for 135 km over the Col du Aravis, Col du Colombiere, and it finished on top of the Col du Cordon – three major Alpine climbs.”
What Hoban sees as perhaps his greatest achievement was his first place in the Ghent-Wevelgem Classic in 1974, which saw him beat the five-time Tour de France winner Eddy Merckx.
He said: “I did win Ghent-Wevelgem and that’s like just below the top Flanders and Roubaix classic, but it was still 250 km taking in the cobbled climbs of West Flanders. And as far as I’m concerned it was a great win, but it was an even greater win because the guy who I beat was the great Eddy Merckx. So I beat all the best Belgians of that era, Merckx, De Vlaeminck, Godefoot and Maertens.”
On the subject of the greatest cyclist of all time Hoban is unequivocal. There’s not a moment’s hesitation as he offers forth the name of the legendary Belgian he beat at Ghent-Wevelgem, Eddy Merckx.
Merckx, nicknamed the cannibal on account of his uncompromising appetite for victory, won more than 300 titles between 1965 and 1978.
“There’s only one guy. Eddy Merckx,” he says, “there’s no-one will ever, ever, emulate him. And the reason why they won’t is because they don’t have to now. The season in our day started in February in the south of France and you went from one race, to the next race, to the next race, to the next race, to the next race, to the Tour de France and then to the end of season classics.
"And the only reason you wouldn’t have ridden them was if you were ill, crashed or if you’d lost form altogether. Young people today say ‘Lance Armstrong he’s won the Tour de France seven times’, I say ‘yeah Eddy Merckx won the Tour de France five times, the Tour of Italy six times and the Tour of Spain two times, and he won every classic there was’.
“Now if you did a points system, Lance Armstrong would not be up at the top. In fact there are others like Bernard Hinault, a great French rider, Jacques Anquetil, another great French rider, both of those guys won the Tour de France five times, both won the Tour of Italy twice and I’m sure both won the Tour of Spain once.”
Although Hoban is full of praise for the British cyclist Bradley Wiggins, who took fourth place in the 2009 Tour de France but finished disappointingly in 24th position this year, he does not believe the English rider can win the Tour.
He said: “Bradley Wiggins is a good rider, he’s not a great rider he’s a good rider, a very good rider. Last year he surpassed himself finishing fourth, last year he had a better-structured team around him than he had this year in the Sky team.
"So having said that I don’t believe in the way they prepare for a race. Bradley Wiggins had done nothing pre the Tour de France apart from a prologue win in the Giro. He’d not tested himself on a mountain stage anywhere, and if you don’t test yourself how on earth can you know what you’re going to do.
“He was possibly unfortunate in a certain way because this year he used the tour of Italy, the Giro, as preparation and they’ve never had such bad weather as they had in this year’s Giro. The weather was atrocious, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, which is not ideal for a cyclist preparing for a big race.”
The remark about being tested on mountain stages lies at the heart of what it takes to win the tour, as Hoban explains.
“You can analyse any Tour de France,” he says, “no matter how many started there’s only ever going to be five people who are going to be capable of winning. Max five. If you look at the first five overall and see where they are and you see suddenly from fifth backwards the distance comes.
“The Tour de France is like an elimination race and the first small difference is in the prologue, usually where people lose time. And then theoretically until they hit the first mountain whichever the mountains are, it’ll be the first mountain stage that will decide, and slowly the selection takes place.
"But no matter how many riders are going to be there, a rider can’t afford to have a bad day on one mountain. We always used to say if you’re going to have a bad day, have a bad day on a sprinters day when everyone finishes together.
“Now if you finish in the first 10 or the last 10, you’ve still got the same time. But in the mountains, you have a bad day in a mountain and you can lose 10 minutes just like that. You lose 10 minutes your tour is finished.”
As Newtown prepares to host a stage of the Tour of Britain next month Hoban believes cycling is better placed to captivate the public consciousness then ever before.
He said: “Cycling is on an up at the moment, it’s on a real big up because of the Beijing Olympics, and yeah we’re prominent because of Olympic gold medals, Sir Chris Hoy, Bradley Wiggins and Victoria Pendleton, and Mark Cavendish’s recent successes in the Tour de France, so cycling is on an up and up and up.”
Even at 70 Hoban is still a passionate and active cyclist, taking as many opportunities as possible to get out on the roads of Mid Wales, so next time you see a cyclist bear in mind you could be looking at one the greatest riders Britain has ever produced.