Harm Ottenbros (27 June 1943 – 4 May 2022) was a Dutch road bicycle racer who raced as a professional from 1967 to 1976. His sporting career began with DTS Zaandam. 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. World champion Harm Ottenbros 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. The race then fell into a lull of uncertainty. The two biggest riders, Roger De Vlaeminck of Belgium and the Dutch sprinter Gerben Karstens, held each other in checkmate. The Belgian couldn't attack without taking Karstens with him and being outsprinted but Karstens couldn't risk a break and the ignominy of having De Vlaeminck power past him. Neither would give the other a centimetre. Profiting from the problem, Ottenbros broke clear with Julien Stevens, champion of Belgium the previous year and a stage winner in the 1969 Tour de France but little else. They stayed away until the line, went to a