March 28, 2025

Hoban's classic

With Ghent-Wevelgem tomorrow we look back 54 years to the only British winner of this classic race, Barry Hoban, in an extract from his autobiography, Vas-y Barry.

The book was published by Cycling Legends Books and is only available from our website, www.cyclinglegends.co.uk. It’s the second book Barry wrote about his cycling life, but Barry says: “This is the one I wanted to write immediately after I stopped racing, but it might have upset a few people. Times have changed now, and so have I.”

Here’s the extract:

But we were on a roll at the start of 1974 in the Gan-Mercier team. We’d won Paris-Nice and Semaine Catalane with Joop Zoetemelk. We didn’t do so well in Milan-San Remo, but next up were the northern classics, the first of which was the Tour of Flanders. We were all good, we were all feeling great. I had a problem in the race and I missed the split, but we had riders in what was a big break with a lot of good riders in it.

Barry Hoban and Joop Zoetemelk

It was the first year that the Tour of Flanders finished in Meerbeke, next to Ninove. So there was the Muur in Geraardsbergen, then the Bosberg, then coming off the Bosberg you had 10 kilometres, most of which was slightly downhill. Then you went right, then right again, then you went up a drag to the finish. And it was attack, after attack, after attack coming off the Bosberg.

But then there was a lull and that’s when Cees Bal, a young Dutch rider in our team went. He did it like Dutch riders do - he went off, found the gutter, put his head down and rode and rode. He rode as hard as he could, and for a second nobody reacted. That was all he needed, that hesitation, Cees won superbly. So, hey, we were still on a roll.

Next was Ghent-Wevelgem on the Wednesday between Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. Back then in Ghent-Wevelgem you zig-zagged your way to the coast, then you went down the coast and you turned inland near De Panne and came to the Hellingen, the hills; the Zwarterberg, Rodeberg, the Molenberg and the Kemmelberg. And Ghent-Wevelgem was well over 250 kilometres long back then.

Hoban, often the only British rider in the biggest races

Also, in those days you had three circuits of the Zwarterberg the Molenberg, the Rodeberg and the Kemmelberg; three circuits. You went up the Kemmelberg three different ways too, and I loved that climb, it’s short, steep and nasty. The guys always put a 21 on for their biggest sprocket, but I fitted a 22, just to take a bit of the strain away.

But one of the problems you had with the gears in those days was we didn’t have index gearing. We didn’t even have the Simplex retro-friction leavers, we had Campagnolo friction gear levers, and they were notorious for moving when you put extra pressure on the pedals. And if the lever moved the chain jumped onto a smaller sprocket, usually about two down from what you were in; so bang, your legs would suddenly hit this much higher gear. I had that problem going up the Kemmelberg for the final time.

Always a threat in cobbled classics, Hoban was 3rd in the 1972 Paris-Roubaix

I was in the front group with Roger De Vlaeminck and Eddy Merckx. We were all side by side more or less, and I was riding on the brake lever hoods but sat down. You try not to get out of the saddle on the Kemmelberg, if you did your bike would bounce around all over the place. Then my gears started tick, tick, tick, ticking. The lever had moved and the chain was going to jump out of the 22. I took my hand off the hoods and I pushed the gear back in. But it happened again, and again, and every time I pushed the lever back I lost a bit of ground. In the end I went over the top of the Kemmelberg about 15 to 20 metres behind the De Vlaeminck, Godefroot and Merckx group, and they weren’t hanging about.

The winning break formed last time up the Kemmelberg

They dropped down the other side, flew through Kemmel village, and they were on their way to Menen. They were going flat out, and the wind was blowing side on. I pulled everything out going down the Kemmelberg, made a big effort and quickly got back up to them. We were in the crosswinds, and it would have been the death to any hope of winning if I’d not made it back to the front just then. But when I got there it still wasn’t comfortable because they had one small echelon at the front, and the rest of us were in a line behind, gutter grovelling.

I was in that line, crying out for a right or left turn so the wind wasn’t side on, so they’d swing out in front of me, bunch up a bit and let me in. There were some riders behind me, I kept looking behind me to check, but then it broke. Suddenly there was no one else behind at all. I was last man in the line and riding like I saw Guido Reybrouck doing, with my bike in a straight line but with me leaning over to get a bit of shelter from the guy in front. I was almost riding side saddle, with the bike in the wind but some of my upper body getting shelter.

You can’t keep that up forever and at long last we changed direction, it bunched up and I was in. Phew! I looked around, there were 17 of us clear so I started tapping through with everybody else. But the thing was I had some team mates with me, and that hadn’t happened very often at this stage of a classic. I had Alain Santy and I had Raymond Poulidor, but we were up against the crème de la crème of Belgian cycling. Eddy Merckx, the world number one, Roger De Vlaeminck, Walter Planckaert, Eric Leman, Walter Godefroot, Frans Verbeek, Herman Van Springel and Freddy Maertens were all in that break.

Hoban (left) and Raymond Poulidor

We went through Menen, then through Wervik, and from there you had five kilometres dead straight to the line in Wevelgem. It has always finished in the same place, they re-draw the finish line each year. You can go down there now and see it. I knew I had overdrive that day, I knew I could win. On occasions I had it, Merckx probably had it most of the time, but now and again I had it, and the thing is you knew you had it, you knew you would win.

I was on the 14 sprocket and it was easy. I was just sussing the wheels, riding the train, and then the attacks started. Danguillaume attacked. Then Van Springel attacked. Gaps opened right left and centre, but I didn’t panic. Poulidor was there, so I was shouting; “Raymond, close the gap, close the gap,” and he closed the gaps. He did it once, twice, maybe three times, then Tino Tabak, I think it was Tabak, was the last to attack.

By then we had 300 metres left. It was the start of the sprint really, and Merckx, Leman and De Vlaeminck went straight up to Tabak, and they were all across the road in front of me, and I was praying for a gap to open, please let a gap open. Then 200 metres from the line they spread out a bit more, and a gap opened. I dropped it into the 13 sprocket, and wham, I went straight through the middle of them. And boy, that was my best-ever win, it was magnificent. I’d beaten the greatest of the Belgians, and you look on the line, it wasn’t by inches, I was a full length clear. And Eddy Merckx didn’t like it. He did not like it one bit.

Barry Hoban, a clear winner

There was a great photograph taken when Fred Debruyne was doing the post-race interviews, and there’s me there full of the joys of spring, and Eddy stood right next to me with a sour puss face on. The headline in the newspaper read; ‘Who won and who lost?’

I am so proud of winning that race. Ghent-Wevelgem was 244 kilometres long in 1974, and the average speed was 44.363kph. Tom Boonen won in 2012 at 42.450kph and it was 235 kilometres. And in 2014 John Degenkolb was the winner, doing just over 42kph for 220 kilometres. Now, I’m not saying it was me who made the pace that high, it was the collective class of the classics riders from that era, but I had to be there to sprint at the end. And when you think about what we did it on; steel bikes, 12 gears, no index gears, no lycra, no computers, and no radio…..No, we had to think for ourselves.