Rudi Altig
Altig in 2006
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| Personal information | ||||||||||||||||
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| Full name | Rudi Altig | |||||||||||||||
| Born |
18 March 1937 Mannheim, Germany |
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| Died | 11 June 2016 (aged 79) Remagen, Germany |
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| Team information | ||||||||||||||||
| Current team | Retired | |||||||||||||||
| Discipline | Track and road | |||||||||||||||
| Role | Rider | |||||||||||||||
| Rider type | Sprinter | |||||||||||||||
| Professional team(s) | ||||||||||||||||
| 1959 | Torpedo-Fichtel & Sachs | |||||||||||||||
| 1960–1961 | Rapha-Gitane-Dunlop | |||||||||||||||
| 1962–1964 | Saint Raphael | |||||||||||||||
| 1965 | Margnat-Paloma | |||||||||||||||
| 1966–1967 | Molteni | |||||||||||||||
| 1968–1969 | Salvarani | |||||||||||||||
| 1970–1971 | GBC-Zimba | |||||||||||||||
| Major wins | ||||||||||||||||
| World champion individual pursuit (1960–1961) Vuelta a España (1962) Tour de France green jersey (1962) Tour of Flanders (1964) World Cycling Championship (1966) Milan – San Remo (1968) |
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Medal record
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Rudi Altig (18 March 1937 – 11 June 2016) was a German professional track and road racing cyclist who won the 1962 Vuelta a España and the world championship in 1966. After his retirement from sports he worked as a television commentator.
Rudi Altig was born in Mannheim, Baden, Germany, an area which had produced good track riders. He began racing in 1952, following his older brother, Willi. The brothers teamed for madison and other two-man races, becoming the best in the country. The British promoter, Jim Wallace, booked Altig to ride with Hans Jaroszewicz at a meeting on Herne Hill velodrome in Good Friday in 1956. He said:
What a pair they made! They just about slaughtered a top-class field of international riders, with all our best home lads. Only Michel Rousseau, later that year to become world sprint champion, was able to take a points sprint from them. That was in the first sprint, too; thereafter the German pair gained not only every sprint for points but every prime [lap prize] as well ... They went on to Coventry [another meeting held over Easter] and did much the same thing, winning everything in which they rode, so classy was their performance.
Altig became national sprint champion in 1957 and 1958. Then Karly Ziegler, a coach, took over his preparation when he joined the Endspurt Mannheim club and Altig became a pursuiter. He won the 1959 national pursuit championship and won the madison championship with his brother. Later that year he beat many of the world's best pursuiters to become world champion in Amsterdam.
Altig was allowed by the Union Cycliste Internationale to turn professional in 1960 within a year of his world championship. He rode his first professional six-day, in Denmark, that winter. Wallace said:
No man ever settled down better or quicker to a pro career than the able Altig. In the hurly-burly world of indoor track racing. Rudi never seemed a novice. Settling down at once, tearing strips off established stars, he soon started to fill indoor tracks which had long forgotten the welcome sight of a 'house full' sign. He brought back the biggest winter racing boom to Germany for many years, reminiscent of the balmy pre-war days. With seven tracks at home - more than in the rest of Europe - Altig had a busy time and was soon in the big money.
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