Here’s a great interview with Gimondi where he talks about the worlds at Barcelona. Basically…Gimondi thinks that Merckx just didn’t have it that day and just couldn’t admit that he got beat fair and square by Gimondi. I guess the story according to Merckx was that Maertens blew the leadout by going too fast, but Gimondi says that since he could easily get on Maertens’ wheel when he jumped (and Gimondi did not consider himself a sprinter) means that Maertes wasn’t torching it and that Merckx just didn’t have it in his legs to sprint. It was interesting to see that Gimondi thought that Maertens could have won if he rode his own race in the sprint instead of working for Merckx who just didn’t have it that day.