Cyclist
Pro race history: Bernard Hinault wins a frozen Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 1980
Watch the closing 5km of the 1980 edition of Liège-Bastogne-Liège and, as the camera settles on Bernard Hinault, you soon realise the huge margin of victory about to be enjoyed by the Frenchman.
The patron of the peloton is out front alone and wearing number 44 on the back of his famous yellow and black Renault team jersey, and as he enters the outskirts of Liège a motorcycle pulls alongside and there, etched on the blackboard carried by the motorcycle’s pillion passenger, are the bare details that confirm Hinault has smashed his competition: No44: 8’ 30”.
It’s a huge gap of course – one that would ultimately grow into a winning margin of more than nine minutes – but those numbers alone fail to reflect the true magnitude of a performance that will go down as one of the greatest exploits in cycling history.
There is little in the footage of those final 5km to indicate the horrendous conditions faced by Hinault and his fellow riders over the preceding 240km. Sure, Hinault is wearing unusually large black gloves and his face is glowing red, but the crowds are large and the sun is casting shadows on largely dry roads. As the finish line approaches, Hinault briefly raises his left hand in acknowledgement. His gesture is directed towards the hotel in which his team is based and which Hinault knows is filled with all the teammates who had started this race alongside him but have long since abandoned. Later those teammates will prepare a hot bath for their leader, one which he will then empty and refill with tepid water in order not to shock his frozen body.
When Hinault crosses the line there isn’t even a flicker of reaction from the man who has just recorded his second Liège win and the third of an eventual five Monuments.
‘I didn’t raise my arms, partly because everyone knew I had won but also because I was completely done,’ he later reflected. ‘If I had raised my arms, I would have fallen flat on my face.’
A massacre and an epic
The race had rolled out from Liège a little more than seven hours before Hinault returned victorious. It was 20th April but temperatures were close to freezing and the skies were dark, heavy with the rain that would soon fall and which would turn first to sleet and then snow as the race progressed. The official starters numbered 174 but how many actually started the race is unclear, with stories of some riders signing in and collecting their numbers only to return directly to their hotels given the forecast conditions.
Regardless of how many of those 174 actually started, once they were underway the number of riders in the race reduced quickly as conditions worsened dramatically.
‘I went back to the team car for gloves, a long-sleeved jersey and a rain jacket,’ Sean Kelly told author William Fotheringham for his book Bernard Hinault And The Fall And Rise Of French Cycling. ‘As I went back to the peloton snow began to fall… there were guys coming back in the other direction all the time, riding back to Liège – the ones who had been at the front of the bunch and had given up.’
Other riders reportedly dismounted and simply got into the cars of friends and family. And this after only 25km of racing. As the snow accumulated, Hinault also considered stepping off.
‘It snowed almost all the way to Bastogne,’ Hinault told Velonews in 2020. ‘But just before we hit the turn-around point in Bastogne, the sun broke through. That was perhaps what saved me. It was probably the only reason I stayed in the race.’
The respite didn’t last long and as the riders headed back to Liège snow was soon falling again. By now there were only two Renault riders in the race: Hinault and Maurice Le Guilloux, who was struggling to see in the snowy conditions. Renault’s sports director, Cyrille Guimard, summoned Le Guilloux, passed him his own pair of Ray-Bans through the car window, told him to be careful as they cost 1,000 francs, and sent him to find and help Hinault.
As the hills that punctuate the return to Liège approached, and with the two Renault riders now together, Hinault told Le Guilloux that if it was still snowing when they reached the feed station at Vielsalm, 90km from the finish, he was done. Yet again the sun briefly broke through as the feed station neared and Hinault, encouraged by Le Guilloux and not wanting to quit before his teammate, opted to continue.
Guimard then drew alongside and told Hinault to take off his jacket. Thinking he was joking, Hinault refused but Guimard insisted, telling him that the race was now starting in earnest. Up the road were a handful of riders, with the race being led by Rudy Pevenage.
‘My cape was made of waxed fabric and I was very warm inside it,’ Hinault reflected. ‘But I took it off as instructed. I decided the only thing to do was ride as hard as I could to keep myself warm.’
As Hinault ramped up his efforts, he began to reel in those ahead, catching Pevenage before heading to the front.
‘After a few hundred metres Hinault looked back to see if any of his breakaway companions were ready to assist with the pace-making,’ writes Peter Cossins in The Monuments, ‘only to find he was on his own.’
Hinault still had 80km to go amid frozen conditions but set his mind on riding alone to the finish.
‘I wanted to force a selection, so that I could start the final with at most about five people with me,’ Hinault told reporters after the finish. ‘When I reached Rudy Pevenage in no time, and had no one on my wheel anymore, I continued. The solo effort lasted much longer than I had planned.’
Decades later Hinault told Velonews that even though he had 80km to go in extremely challenging conditions, he knew at this point he had the race won, saying, ‘When I look back on that victory today, I know I really pulled a great exploit. But let me tell you, in the heat of the moment, I really suffered.’
Only 21 riders made it back to Liège, with Hinault’s eventual winning margin over Hennie Kuiper 9min 24sec. Forty-four years on he remains the last Frenchman to have won the race.
‘It was bitter and angry in the 66th Liège-Bastogne-Liège,’ reported the Dutch daily Leidsch Dagblad. ‘A massacre and at the same time an epic of human perseverance.’
• This article originally appeared in issue 153 of Cyclist magazine. Click here to subscribe
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