Peter Post, a legend of Dutch cycling, has died after a long illness. The 77-year-old was best known as the most successful Six-Days rider of his generation but also had a highly successful career on the road, and as a director sportif.
Post, who was born in the Dutch capital Amsterdam, turned profession in 1956, and almost immediately began to win Six-Day races. He won 65 in all throughout his career, which was a record at the time and has only been surpassed by three riders: René Pijnen (72), Danny Clark (74) and Patrick Sercu (88).
On the road he achieved more modest success, with few major victories; he won the Tour of the Netherlands in 1960, the Tour of Germany in 1962 and the Tour of Belgium and the Netherlands national championship in 1963.
His greatest victory by far though was the 1964 edition of Paris-Roubaix, where he outsprinted World champion Benoni Beheyt; he became the first Dutchman to win the race, and did so while wearing the red, white and blue driekleur of national champion.
Because of the systematic tarmacking of the northern region of France throughout the early 1960s, the Paris-Roubaix route featured few challenging cobbled sectors. Due to this, Post’s average speed of 45.131kph is still the fastest ever in the Enfer du Nord; the high speed of Post’s win, and the loss of the cobbled roads, led organisers to seek out the farm tracks that are used in the race today.
After retirement Post became the director sportif of the legendary TI-Raleigh team, whose riders included Joop Zoetemelk, who won the 1980 Tour de France, and Jan Raas. The team became Panasonic-Raleigh in 1984, with riders like Phil Anderson, Robert Millar and Alexi Grewal. After two years as Novemail-Histor the team folded and Post retired from the sport.
He returned to cycling in 2005 as an advisor to the Rabobank team, but has more recently been fighting a long illness.