The sprint that never ended

By Chris Sidwells

This weekend almost all European countries, and a few others, have their national road race championships. It’s something special to be champion of your country, and the titles are always fought for. None more so than the British road race in 1979, where 2 sprinters clashed and echoes of that clash rumbled around UK cycling for years afterwards. I’m going to tell the story of that sprint as dispassionately as I can for very personal reasons. The sprint was between Barry Hoban and Sid Barras, and I knew Barry very well and loved him dearly, and Sid is a valued friend still.

The 1979 British professional road race championship came down to a few seconds on a wide, slightly rising road in Telford, but those few seconds lived on because the two men remembered them very differently, but also through their own perspectives. Sid Barras won, Barry Hoban finished second and what remains is the human truth of how two proud professionals, from different generations and different racing worlds, remember the same sprint.

Hoban crossed the finish line protesting, but the race officials allowed the result. Barras was British professional road race champion, and Hoban refused to attend the medal presentation. To Barry that was not petulance, it was protest. The only way he could protest after the result stood because he felt deeply wronged.

Barry was 38 years old and in the final year of a long and distinguished career as a continental professional. He’d done what few British riders of his generation could do. He’d gone abroad, survived there and won there. He built a life and a reputation in the hardest school of racing, won 8 stages of the Tour de France, a classic and stood on the podium of 2 very different monuments. He was respected in a world where respect was earned daily, often painfully, and never given because of nationality or reputation alone.

Hoban defeating Eddy Merckx to win Ghent-Wevelgem in 1974

The race

The British championship in 1979 was held over 200 kilometres on a testing circuit around Telford. Barry remembered a nasty hill each lap, a circuit hard enough to wear the race down gradually rather than split it with one single attack. His condition, he said, was not bad. He had been racing well in Belgium in events of roughly the same distance, and he came to the championship with proper race miles in his legs. He’d won the single-day marathon London to Bradford a few weeks before, miles ahead of anyone else.

He was not the only British continental in the 1979 title race. There was Phil Edwards, a rider of intelligence and a valued team-mate of Francesco Moser. Graham Jones was there too for Peugeot, as was Paul Sherwen from the Fiat team. To Barry, that mattered. They were 4 continental pros, men who knew what they were doing in races of that length. They also knew each other, they understood how to look out for each other too.

Eventually the front of the race was reduced to 6; Hoban, Edwards, Jones, Sherwen, Dudley Hayton and Sid Barras. Of those 6, Barry knew exactly who to watch if it came to a sprint. Sid Barras was fast, very fast and Barry respected that. He knew that if Barras reached the final few hundred metres still fresh, he was dangerous.

Sid knew it too. For him, the national professional road race title was not a trinket. It was something he had been trying for years to win. He was younger than Barry, based in Britain, and racing in a different professional world. But he was no less serious, no less hungry, and no less conscious of what the championship meant.

He also knew Barry was still quick.

Even at the end of a fabulous career, Hoban remained a man who could win from a small group. Sid respected him deeply, admired him, but at the end of a national championship no sprinter gives another an open road from sentiment.

The final 500 metres were on a wide new road in the middle of Telford, rising slightly to the finish. It was the kind of road on which a sprint can look simple from a distance and feel anything but simple from inside the group. After 200 kilometres, especially on a hard, wet day, the final straight is not just about speed, it’s about calculation under fatigue, about judging who still has what left. It’s about deciding when to launch and when to wait, about road position, nerve and instinct.

Barry’s account was clear. Phil Edwards wound the sprint up on the left side of the road with around 250 metres to go, Barras and Hoban then went for the line. Barry was behind Sid and slightly to his right, which he felt was the ideal place to be. He was on the wheel of the man he had to beat, close enough to time his effort, close enough to come round when the time was right.

Then, in Barry’s memory, Sid moved sharply to the right. He said Sid continued right until Barry was squeezed to within inches of the right-hand kerb. With around 100 metres to go, Barry felt he had no option but to brake. In a sprint, braking at that moment is fatal; it stops acceleration, destroys momentum, and turns a possible victory into a desperate attempt to rescue what can be.

But having braked, Barry said he tried to go to Sid’s left, only for Sid to move across in front of him again. Sid crossed the line first. Barry crossed second, protesting as he did so. He believed he had been switched.

Sid’s memory of the same finish is different.

He knew the sprint would come down to him and Barry, because they were the fastest men in the group. His view was that Barry had experience, timing and plenty of speed, but Sid had greater explosiveness. For that explosiveness to count, Sid needed the sprint to begin as late as possible.

If he jumped too early, Barry could use his wheel and possibly come past. But if he waited, stayed in front, and launched at the last possible moment, he could create the gap he needed, and it would be too late for Barry to get by.

Coming into the finish, Sid could hardly believe his luck, it was playing out just as he wanted. Barry was behind and had not started sprinting, to Sid that was the situation he wanted. He delayed, he waited, and he made the sprint as short and explosive as he could.

Sid did not and does not accept Barry’s claim that he had gone all over the road to block him. His version was that Barry tried to come past between him and the barrier, and that he, Sid, was not going to move out of the way to give him room.

That distinction matters, Sid does not see himself as having fouled Barry. He was holding the road he’d earned by being in front. He did not believe he had switched him. He did not believe he had committed the kind of irregular sprinting that should cost a rider a national title. He believes he won the 1979 British road title fair and square.

Phil Edwards (left), experienced Euro-pro

Dispute

That is the heart of the dispute, and the reason it still has force. A sprint is not just a question of who is fastest. It’s line, space, wheel, kerb, barrier, body language and intention; all of it happening in seconds through a haze of fatigue and adrenaline. One rider’s legitimate defence of position can feel to another like a door slammed in his face. One rider can believe he has held his line; another can believe it a deliberate block.

The commissaire allowed the result to stand.

For Sid, it was the proudest achievement of his career. He had wanted that title for years. He respected Barry before the race, respected him during it, and says he respects him still. That is why Barry’s refusal to attend the medal presentation disappointed him. It was not how he wanted the day to end.

For Barry, though, refusal was part of the protest. He believed the sprint had been irregular and that his protest should have been upheld. His frustration also went beyond the physical movement in the sprint. He wondered why the decision had gone against him, and he suspected influence from people close to the British professional scene.

Sid rode for the Carlton-Weinmann team. Carlton was owned by Raleigh, and R.J. Chicken imported Weinmann equipment. Barry recalled senior figures connected with Raleigh and R.J. Chicken being present in the VIP area with race organiser Benny Foster. To him, the result and the circumstances around it felt wrong.

Cultural divide

There was a cultural divide too. Barry came from the continent, where sprinting could be brutal, but certain lines were rarely crossed. Sid came from the British professional scene, where sprinting had its own customs and hardness. British-based riders were not soft, they would fight for a finish, but perhaps the unwritten codes were not identical.

Perhaps what Barry regarded as switching, Sid regarded as racing. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in the impossible space between 2 convictions.

What is certain is that neither man’s account feels casual. Barry’s version was detailed, angry and precise; the road, the rightward move, the kerb, the braking, the attempt to go left, the protest, the podium he refused.

Sid’s version was equally clear; the hard day, the knowledge that the sprint was between him and Barry, the need to wait, the chance to jump late, the belief that he had no obligation to open a way through for the man behind him.

The official result remains simple. Sid Barras won, Barry Hoban was second, but the story is not simple.

It’s about a sprint, yes, but also about pride, memory, respect and the different ways racing men carry the past. Barry never forgot that finish, Sid didn’t either.

Most sprints end with raised arms, with handshakes; this one ended with a jersey awarded, a protest rejected, and a podium with one important man missing.

Postscript

Years later I interviewed Sid on stage while Barry was in the audience. I asked Sid which achievement made him proudest. He gave a good answer, but afterwards came over to me and said that, in truth, it was winning the 1979 road race title. He had not said so on stage because he knew it would upset Barry.

That stayed with me, because it showed the other side of the story. Sid was proud of that championship, deeply proud, but he was not careless with Barry’s hurt. Maybe that is where this story should rest. The final few metres meant something profoundly different to the 2 men who fought them, but each understood what they meant to the other.

Photos - John Pierce, Photosport International