races in his first season. He rode particularly well as a senior in multi-day races. He won the Tour of Yugoslavia, the Circuit des Mines, three stages and the mountains prize in the Tour of Austria, and the 1969 Tour de l'Avenir. He also won a gold medal at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City in the 100 km team time-trial with Fedor den Hertog, Jan Krekels and René Pijnen. Professional career Zoetemelk turned professional for Briek Schotte's Belgian Mars–Flandria team in 1970. Initially he was riding in support of team leader Roger De Vlaeminck, but the Belgian abandoned the race due to a crash near the end of the first week. Zoetemelk proved to be by far the strongest remaining rider on the team. Of his teammates who finished the race the highest placed was 69th, with the majority of others coming in the range of 80th to 100th place. While he admitted that Eddy Merckx was the strongest rider in the world in that year's Tour de France, and was not challenging him for victory, he managed to finish on the podium in 2nd place and was the only rider to finish within 15:00 of Merckx during his first two Tour victories in 1969 and 1970. He would wear the yellow jersey for the first time in the 1971 Tour de France, following a stage in which he, Luis Ocaña and Bernard Thévenet were able to drop Merckx for the first time. On stage 10 however, Ocaña stole the show in one of the most memorable attacks in Tour history taking the jersey from Zoetemelk and distancing all of the other favorites. On stage 14 Ocaña and Zoetemelk were involved in one of the most famous crashes in Tour history on the Col de Menté. Zoetemelk managed to survive the impact but Ocaña was seriously injured and had to be taken to the hospital. From that point on Merckx would lead the race and Zoetemelk would finish 2nd for the second consecutive year. He wore the yellow jersey for the second time after winning the Prologue in the 1973 Tour de France, which took place in his home country of the Netherlands. He also picked up another stage win in that year's edition. Zoetemelk won Paris–Nice, the Semana Catalana and the Tour de Romandie in 1974. He then had a near-death experience during a violent crash, once