UCI Road World Championships 1979

The 1979 UCI Road World Championships took place on August 22, 25 and 26 in Valkenburg , the Netherlands .

The southern part of the Limburg province is in the "World Cup frenzy", according to the verdict of the German cycling magazine . Hundreds of thousands of spectators are expected to attend the competitions, and in fact 230,000 fans came to Valkenburg for the professional races on Sundays. The Maastricht-Heerlen motorway, which had previously served as a race track for the team time trial, was partially closed for this reason and converted into a car park.

The field of professionals consisted of 114 drivers, 44 of whom arrived at the finish. The 16-kilometer circuit had to be tackled 17 times including the notorious Cauberg . The German Dietrich Thurau , who had recently won the Tour of Germany in 1979 , was one of the favorites, but had to bow to the Dutchman Jan Raas in the finish line .

175 drivers from 33 nations competed in the amateurs' road race, 114 of whom were able to place; 61 female athletes were registered for women, 57 of whom crossed the finish line. As the second best German behind the third place in the World Cup, Beate Habetz , Ines Varenkamp , who was only 15 and was ninth, was also the youngest participant in the competitions.

In the team time trial, the team from the GDR became world champions for the first time. The West German four-wheeler landed in 10th place. By and large, the athletes of the Association of German Cyclists “went down without a sound,” said cycling .

Results

Women

Single road race over 64 km

space	Athlete	country	time
1	Petra de Bruin	NED	1:43:57 h
2	Jenny De Smet	BEL	same time
3	Beate Habetz	DEU	1:44:23 h

Men - professionals

Individual road race over 274.8 km

space	athlete	country	time
1	Jan Raas	NED	7:03:09 h
2	Dietrich Thurau	DEU	same time
3	Jean-René Bernaudeau	FRA	same time

Men (amateurs)

Single road race over 178.8 km

space	athlete	country	time
1	Gianni Giacomini	ITA	4:19:26 h
2	Jan Jankiewicz	POLE	same time
3	Bernd Drogan	GDR	4:19:27 h

Team time trial over 100 km

space	country	Athletes	time
1	GDR	Bernd Drogan / Hans-Joachim Hartnick / Andreas Petermann / Falk Boden	1:58:29 h
2	POLE	Jan Jankiewicz / Czesław Lang / Stefan Ciekanski / Witold Plutecki	2:00:33 h
3	NOR	Geir Digerud / Morten Saether / Jostein Wilmann / Hans-Peter Odegaard	2:00:42 h

literature

• Helmer Boelsen : The history of the cycling world championship , Bielefeld 2007, p. 132, ISBN 978-3-936973-33-4
• Cycling , August / September 1979

See also

• UCI Track World Championships 1979