1969 UCI Road World Championships

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The 1969 UCI Road World Championships took place for professionals on August 10th in Zolder, Belgium and from August 22nd to 24th for amateurs in Czechoslovakia , in Brno .

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 professional race took place in Zolder, the other races, including that of the women, in Brno.

Race of the professionals

For the professional race, the 8.762-kilometer Zolder car race course was chosen, despite protests from Eddy Merckx, who saw no chances for himself on this flat track. However, the Belgian Cycling Federation decided against the interests of one of its best riders, as you could charge entry on the racetrack. There were 93 drivers at the start, two thirds of which made it to the finish. World champion was the outsider Harm Ottenbros from the Netherlands . The knocked-off Merckx slid out of the peloton 300 meters from the finish and disappeared so as not to have to drive past the fully occupied grandstands. The best German was Rolf Wolfshohl in tenth place.

Races of amateurs and women

In the amateur road race, 171 drivers from 31 nations started, including ten Germans like Jürgen Tschan , Wilfried Trott and Algis Oleknavicius . The race was on the Masaryk ring . The best German in 55th place was Josef Flachs from Aachen . The German champion Michael Becker was disqualified because he had fed outside the designated zone. The magazine Radsport commented on the renewed victory of the Swedish Fåglum brothers in the team time trial : “There is no real answer to these Petterssons”.

In the women's race, which suffered from the pouring rain, 43 drivers were at the start. At around 69.7 kilometers, the route was almost 15 kilometers longer than in previous years. The winner, the American Audrey McElmury , crossed the finish line with a 50-second lead and thus won the first rainbow jersey for the USA since 1912, when Frank Kramer became the sprint world champion on the track . McElmury, who finished fifth in the World Cup last year, had to pay her own travel expenses because the US Cycling Federation (allegedly) didn't have enough money. Their victory was so surprising to the officials in Brno that it took half an hour to find a tape with the American national anthem.

Two German drivers - Gisela Nagel and Ursula Bürger - were at the start and ended up in midfield. The coverage of the women's race in the German specialist magazine Radsport was much more detailed and appreciative this year than in previous years. However, this reporter ( Helmer Boelsen ) could not resist mentioning that the winner, Audrey McElmury, was the mother of a two-year-old son, and that the German drivers survived this "ordeal" "exhausted" and "brave" and braved the heavy rain " despite the suffering hairdos ”(they wore helmets!).

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 : Russian tanks stood in the streets, armed soldiers patrolled, and the spectators on the roadside cheered the American athletes euphorically. In contrast, there was "[...] an icy silence when the flag with hammer and compass was drawn from East Germany, 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.

Results

Women

Individual road race over 69.7 km

space athlete country time
1 Audrey McElmury United StatesUnited States United States 2:04:27 h
2 Bernadette Swinnerton United KingdomUnited Kingdom GBR 2:05:37 h
3 Nina Trofimova Soviet Union 1955Soviet Union URS same time

Men - professionals

Single road race over 262.860 km

space athlete country time
1 Harm Ottenbros NetherlandsNetherlands NED 6:23:44 h
(41.099 km / h)
2 Julien Stevens BelgiumBelgium BEL + 2:18 min
3 Michele Dancelli ItalyItaly ITA + 2:21 min

Men - amateurs

Single road race over 181.233 km

space athlete country time
1 Leif Mortensen DenmarkDenmark THE 4:38:30 h
(39.924 km / h)
2 Jean-Pierre Monseré BelgiumBelgium BEL 4:39:29 h
3 Gustave Van Roosbroeck BelgiumBelgium BEL same time

Team time trial (96.9 km)

space country team time
1 SwedenSweden SWE Erik Pettersson / Gösta Pettersson /
Sture Pettersson / Tomas Pettersson 		2:01:17 h
2 DenmarkDenmark THE Mogens Frey / Jørgen Emil Hansen /
Jørn Lund / Leif Mortensen 		2:03:02 h
3 SwitzerlandSwitzerland CHE Xaver Kurmann / Bruno Hubschmid /
Josef Fuchs / Walter Bürki 		2:07:58 h

literature

  • Helmer Boelsen: The history of the road world championship , Bielefeld 2007, p. 110, ISBN 978-3-936973-33-4 .
  • Cycling , August / September 1969

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Cycling , August 26, 1969
  2. ↑ Hickoksports.com ( Memento from December 16, 2011 in the web archive archive.today ) (English)
  3. ↑ Peter Nye: Hearts of Lions , Markham 1988, pp. 228-230.
  4. ^ Cycling , August 26, 1969
  5. ↑ s. Fåglum brothers

See also