The venue was the circuit of the UCI World Championships 1974 on Mont Royal . On the rainy streets of Montréal , a group of 10 drivers pulled away from the peloton on the sixth lap of the race. The Swede Bernt Johansson broke away from this in the last lap and became Olympic champion with a margin of 31 seconds. The German driver Klaus-Peter Thaler , who won the sprint of the chasing group, came in second . But since he had left the straight line and allegedly obstructed other drivers, the jury distanced him and placed him in ninth place. This benefited the Italian Giuseppe Martinelli and the Pole Mieczysław Nowicki , who won silver and bronze as a result, even though the two had committed the same offense as Thaler. As later became known, the jury consisted of an Italian, a Pole and a referee from the GDR.