“Escaped from the hospital and bought vodka”
Former cycling star crashes – and gives dramatic insights
12/25/2025 – 10:23 a.mReading time: 1 min.
More than four per thousand, in the emergency room several times – but Leif Hoste repeatedly reached for the bottle. The ex-cyclist now speaks openly about his alcohol addiction.
After retiring from his career in 2012, Leif Hoste became addicted to alcohol. “I could no longer tell the difference between day and night. Everything was driven by the constant urge for alcohol,” explained the former professional cyclist in an interview with the Belgian newspaper “Het Laatste Nieuws”.
What started as occasional drinking quickly developed into a permanent condition. When Hoste’s private life collapsed, he took to the bottle even more. The alcohol, he says, gave him “peace and control.” The now 48-year-old repeatedly ignored medical warnings at the time. “I’ve been admitted to the hospital emergency room at least 10 times with blood alcohol levels above 4.5. A doctor I’ve known for 30 years told me, ‘A normal person wouldn’t survive that.'”
However, that didn’t deter the athlete. After a hospital stay, things weren’t going well for him; he didn’t want to die, “but an hour and a half later I put on my shoes and pants, fled the hospital and bought two bottles of vodka on the way home,” said Hoste. At times he drank up to three bottles a day.
Hoste, who competed in the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix during his active time, has now been abstinent for around six months.