[1] Ottenbros is best remembered for capturing the gold medal and rainbow jersey at the 1969 world cycling championship road race in Zolder, Belgium.

Harm Ottenbros was a late selection for the Netherlands' team for the world cycling championship after its leader, Jan Janssen, fell ill.

[3] 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."

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.

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.

The two biggest riders, Roger De Vlaeminck of Belgium and the Dutch sprinter Gerben Karstens, held each other in checkmate.

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 straight sprint and Ottenbros won on the inside by centimetres, throwing his head down like a track rider and not lifting it again for a couple of seconds.

Astonishly enough, the Gerrit Schulte Trofee, which rewards the best Dutch cyclist of the year, was not attributed in 1969,[4][circular reference] despite Ottenbros having won a major race.

He made appearances with other bygone stars like Jan Janssen – whose absence from the world championship led to his downfall – and Jo de Roo.