UCI Track World Championships 1969

The 59th UCI Track World Championships took place from August 5th to 9th, 1969 for professionals in Antwerp and from August 20th to 24th for amateurs in Brno .

Venues

For 1969, Czechoslovakia had applied to host the world championships, but only wanted to host the amateur competitions. The competitions had already been separated in the previous year, according to Olympic and non-Olympic disciplines. This year only the competitions for the professionals took place in Antwerp, the other races, including those for women, in Brno.

The races in Brno took place on a half-covered 400-meter cement track of the Brno Velodrome , which meant that there were no delays due to rain as in many years before. The professional races were held in the Antwerp Sportpaleis ; this was the first time that world championships were held on an indoor track.

Women's race

The women's track races were a purely Soviet domain, only the Dutch Keetie van Oosten-Hage was able to break this phalanx with a third place in the single pursuit .

Political environment

The date of the World Championships in Brno coincided with the first anniversary of the invasion of the Eastern Bloc countries into Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring : Soviet tanks stood in the streets , armed soldiers patrolled, and the spectators on the roadside cheered the US athletes euphorically. In contrast, there was "[...] an icy silence when the flag with hammer and sickle from East Germany was drawn, furious whistles and hectic rejection of the red flag of the Soviet Union". The President of the Czechoslovak Cycling Federation, Dr. Rudolf Böhm, asked the spectators to stop whistling and booing against Russian riders, otherwise the World Cycling Championships could be endangered, but they didn't stick to it. The spectators left the hall at awards ceremonies with Soviet athletes.

From a sporting point of view, the “technical commission, which is mainly peppered with representatives from the Eastern Bloc”, met with a lot of criticism from Western states, as its decisions were often perceived as one-sided. There are too many "bad coincidences" suspected cycling . The East German representative yawned in the face of a remarkable attempt to stand between a West German and an Italian, in which the audience was “quiet and attentive as in the opera”, “without putting their hands to their mouths, tired and bored”.

Results

Women

discipline	space	country	athlete
sprint	1	Soviet Union	Galina Tsaryova
	2	Soviet Union	Galina Ermolaeva
	3	Soviet Union	Irina Kirichenko
Single pursuit (3000 m)	1	Soviet Union	Raisa Obodovskaya
	2	Soviet Union	Tamara Garkuchina
	3	Netherlands	Keetie van Oosten-Hage

Men (professionals)

discipline	space	country	athlete
sprint	1	Belgium	Patrick Sercu
	2	Belgium	Robert Van Lancker
	3	Italy	Sante Gaiardoni
Single pursuit (5000 m)	1	Belgium	Ferdi Bracke
	2	United Kingdom	Hugh Porter
	3	Netherlands	Peter Post
Standing race (100 km)	1	Netherlands	Jacob Oudkerk / Albertus de Graaf
	2	Belgium	Theo Verschueren / Joop Stakenburg
	3	Italy	Domenico De Lillo / August Meuleman

Men (amateurs)

discipline	space	country	athlete
sprint	1	France	Daniel Morelon
	2	Soviet Union	Omar Pchakadze
	3	Denmark	Peder Pedersen
tandem	1	German Democratic Republic	Jürgen Geschke , Werner Otto
	2	Germany	Jürgen Barth , Rainer Müller
	3	France	Pierre Trentin , Daniel Morelon
Time trial	1	Italy	Gianni Sartori
	2	Poland	Janusz Kierzkowski
	3	Netherlands	Klaas Balk
One's pursuit	1	Switzerland	Xaver Kurmann
(4000 m)	2	France	Bernard Darmet
	3	France	Daniel Rebillard
Team pursuit (4000 m)	1	Soviet Union	Stanislav Moskvin / Vladimir Kuznetsov / Wiktor Bykov / Sergei Kuskow
	2	Italy	Pietro Algeri / Giacomo Bazzan / Giorgio Morbiato / Antonio Castello
	3	France	Claude Buchon / Bernard Darmet / René Grignon / Daniel Rebillard
Standing race	1	Netherlands	Albertus Boom / Bruno Walrave
(1 hour)	2	Netherlands	Cees Stam
	3	Switzerland	Jörg Peter

See also

• 1969 UCI Road World Championships

literature

• Cycling , August / September 1969

Remarks

1. ↑ Peter Nye: Hearts of Lions , Markham 1988, pp. 228-230.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Cycling , August 26, 1969

Web links

• stayer.de (PDF; 18 kB)