1973 UCI Road World Championships

Freddy Maertens (front) finished second in the Professional World Cup (here 1974)

The UCI Road World Championships 1973 were held on August 29 and on September 1 and 2 in the Spanish Barcelona on Mount Montjuïc instead.

It was driven on a circuit of 14.6 kilometers in length, which the professionals had to tackle seventeen times, the male amateurs eleven times and the women four times.

83 riders started among the professionals, of which only 39 reached the finish of the difficult course. World champion was Felice Gimondi , who met the steep slope and who won the race from a group of four outliers. Later it was said that Eddy Merckx had prevented his compatriot Freddy Maertens , with whom he did not have a warm relationship, from becoming world champion. Of the eight German starters, only two remained in the race, Karl-Heinz Küster as 28th and Jürgen Tschan as 29th.

161 riders from 31 countries competed in the amateurs competition. Surprisingly, the Polish team dominated, with Ryszard Szurkowski as the world champion and with Stanisław Szozda the runner-up world champion in road racing. During the race it was very hot and windy; it was decided on the slopes of Montjuic. One and a half kilometers from the finish, Szurkowski pulled away from a group of four escapees. With the participation of Szurkowski and Szozda, the Polish team had already won gold in the team time trial three days earlier, which had taken place without the participation of a West German team.

Results

Women

Single road race over 58.4 km

space	athlete	country	time
1	Nicole Van Den Broeck	BEL	1:31:08 h
2	Keetie van Oosten-Hage	NED	same time
3	Valentina Rebrovskaya	URS	same time

Men - professionals

Single road race over 248.659 km

space	athlete	country	time
1	Felice Gimondi	ITA	6:31:26 h (38.088 km / h)
2	Freddy Maertens	BEL	same time
3	Luis Ocaña Pernía	ESP	same time

Men (amateurs)

(160.6 km)

space	athlete	country	time
1	Ryszard Szurkowski	POLE	4:08:59 h
2	Stanislaw Szozda	POLE	4:09:30 h
3	Bernard Bourreau	FRA	same time

Men (amateurs) - team time trial

See also : team time trial

(100 km)

space	country	team	time
1	POLE	Lucjan Lis , Ryszard Szurkowski , Stanisław Szozda , Tadeusz Mytnik	2: 03: 29.1 h
2	URS	Genadi Komnatow , Juri Michailow , Boris Schukow , Sergei Sinitsin	2: 05: 11.8 h
3	SWE	Tord Filipsson , Lennart Fagerlund , Leif Hansson , Sven-Åke Nilsson	2: 06.41.6 h

literature

• Helmer Boelsen : The history of the cycling world championship , Bielefeld 2007, p. 118, ISBN 978-3-936973-33-4
• Cycling , August / September 1973

See also

• UCI Track World Championships 1973