Rudi Valenta

Rudolf Rudi Valenta (24 March 1921 to 15 July 2001) was an Austrian road racing cyclist born in Vienna. He rose to prominence in the late 1940s by winning the Vienna-Graz-Vienna road race in 1946 and finishing second in it in 1947, while also taking third place overall in the Tour of Austria that year. Selected for the Austrian cycling team at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London, he entered the individual and team road race events; he was the only one of four Austrian riders to finish the individual race, so the Austrian team was left unplaced. After the Games he turned professional, won the Austrian national professional road race title in 1950 and the Vienna-Graz-Vienna race again in 1950 and 1951, and retired in 1952. He later wrote an autobiography about his racing career, published in 1956.