UCI Road World Championships 1981

The 1981 UCI Road World Championships took place from August 26th to 30th in the Czechoslovak capital, Prague .

Racing action

The starting point for the road races was the Strahov Stadium for a circuit over 13.4 kilometers. The women had to cover this route four times, the male amateurs 14 times and the professionals 21 times. The course had few inclines but many curves, but in the opinion of the experts it was too easy and not selective. The route for the team time trial led from Prague to Štěchovice over a route along the Vltava, starting point was the Tatra Smíchov hall .

The Belgian Freddy Maertens became world champion of professional drivers for the second time since 1976. In 1977 he had a serious fall at the Giro d'Italia , then had mental and alcohol problems and it took two years to get back in shape. Of the 112 riders who started, 69 reached the finish. Ten German athletes were at the start, five were included in the ranking, of which Klaus-Peter Thaler achieved the best result with twelfth place.

The world championship title for the only 16-year-old active Ute Enzenauer in the women's road race, in which 75 female riders had started, was positive for the line-up of the Association of German Cyclists . Beate Habetz came in sixth, Ines Varenkamp 14, both also from the German team. The magazine Radsport , which a few years earlier had been rather critical of women's cycling , has now confirmed "the steady upward development that women's cycling has taken in Germany. Since 1978, since the women's competitions have been regularly posted, there has always been a medal for the drivers around national coach Klaus Jörden ".

Andrei Wedernikov from the Soviet Union won the single street race for amateurs . The team time trial was won by the four-man from the GDR , while the West German street four was disappointingly only 15th.

Results

Women

Individual road race over 53.6 km

space	athlete	country	time
1	Ute Enzenauer	DEU	1:30:02 h
2	Jeannie Longo	FRA	same time
3	Connie Carpenter	United States	same time

Men - professionals

Single road race over 268 km

space	athlete	country	time
1	Freddy Maertens	BEL	7:21:59 h (38,200 km / h)
2	Giuseppe Saronni	ITA	same time
3	Bernard Hinault	FRA	same time

Men (amateurs)

Single road race over 187.6 km

space	athlete	country	time
1	Andrei Wedernikov	URS	4:47:05 h
2	Rudy Rogiers	BEL	unknown
3	Gilbert Glaus	CHE	+ 48 s

Team time trial over 100 km

space	country	Athletes	time
1	GDR	Falk Boden / Hans-Joachim Hartnick / Mario Kummer / Olaf Ludwig	1:59:16 h
2	URS	Yuri Kachirin / Sergej Kadatski / Oleg Logwin / Anatoli Jarkin	2:02:06 h
3	CZE	Milan Jurčo / Michal Klasa / Alipi Kostadinovic / Jiří Škoda	2:02:28 h

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Cycling , September 2, 1981, p. 4

literature

• Helmer Boelsen : The history of the cycling world championship , Bielefeld 2007, p. 138, ISBN 978-3-936973-33-4
• Cycling , August / September 1981

See also

• UCI Track World Championships 1981