The 1980 Liège-Bastogne-Liège was held in perhaps the toughest conditions ever faced by riders in a spring Classic
Words Giles Belbin
A moment in time
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 ma
