Harm Ottenbros
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Harm Ottenbros (1969)
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| Full name | Harm Ottenbros | ||||||||||||
| Born |
27 June 1943 Alkmaar, the Netherlands |
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| Discipline | Road | ||||||||||||
| Role | Rider | ||||||||||||
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Medal record
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Harm Ottenbros (born 27 June 1943 in Alkmaar) is a former Dutch road bicycle racer who raced as a professional from 1967 to 1976. Ottenbros is best remembered for capturing the gold medal and rainbow jersey at the 1969 world cycling championship road race in Zolder, Belgium. The relatively unknown Ottenbros edged Julien Stevens of Belgium by a few centimetres to take the victory.
Harmin Ottenbros, known as Harm, was a late selection for the Netherlands' team for the world cycling championship after its leader, Jan Janssen fell ill. The Dutch federation, the KNWU, needed a replacement and Ottenbros made up the numbers. World cycling was dominated at the time by the Belgian champion Eddy Merckx, whose repeated victories had won him many enemies. "When you know how much Merckx is earning in this race," the French champion Raymond Delisle said during that year's Midi Libre, "you lose the will to compete for just the leftovers." In the world championship, reporters assessed, many riders were keener on stopping Merckx from winning than on winning themselves.
L'Équipe reported: "This world championship, just as we'd forecast, was held to ransom right from the start by the formula of national teams, by disagreements among the Belgians, and by the order of battle, which was to stop Eddy Merckx winning. For him, the best of all in terms of absolute talent, the problem looked insoluble. And it was. So the winner of the Tour de France, crushed by numbers, paralysed by the hunting-wolves of the peloton, Marino Basso among them, left the race on the last lap so that his name never even figured in the results. Many of the 150,000 fans in the Zolder motor-racing circuit jeered and whistled as they saw him step off.
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