The road to Merckx

Pogačar’s victory in Liège, his ninth Monument, reignites the debate over his place in cycling history.

One of the things I love most about cycling is that it’s a school of life. It contains almost everything: struggle, heroism, victory, defeat, competition, suffering, hardship, crashes, comebacks... The lesson that hard work doesn’t always bring rewards. That long stretches of apparent stillness can suddenly explode into chaos. And yes, a constant sense of dissatisfaction.

In our era, generational talents and great riders share the road with you-know-who. He seems straight out of those classic cycling tales, with impossible attacks, last-gasp comebacks and legendary wins… But all of this doesn’t always sit well with the average cycling fan. Tadej Pogačar is a rider of legend, yet his dominance is questioned, debated and, for many, simply dull.

Simply the best | A.S.O./Billy Ceusters

It’s true that drama is inherent to sport, and that emotion plays a major role in how we follow it. But here’s a gentle reminder of what we’re witnessing: Pogačar won’t last forever. He doesn’t win everything he targets, and like Van der Poel in recent years, his career will inevitably need to evolve if it’s to remain both long and successful. I don’t find brilliance boring, and I’m not tired of witnessing history in the making… but I accept the debate and I understand the criticism.

Tadej Pogačar hasn’t come just to be the best of his time, his ambition is to be the best of all time. To achieve that, needless to say, he’ll have to surpass the palmarès of legends like Hinault, Coppi, Bartali or Van Looy… Yet all comparisons ultimately lead to the one name no one ever matches: Eddy Merckx.

At first, the debate felt like wild fiction. Then, a tedious exaggeration. But over time, it’s become a serious, reasonable question. Pogačar has grown into a kind of messiah for modern cycling, despite his doubts, defeats and flaws. As Merckx himself admits: “He’s the one who reminds me the most of myself. But comparing generations is always tricky.”

A bit of context

Comparing riders from different eras isn’t just difficult, it’s simply impossible. There are several reasons for that: economic, technological, cultural and media conditions today bear little resemblance to those of cycling in the mid 60s or 70s, the years in which Eddy Merckx built his legendary career (1965-78).

The Legend...

But above all, there are concepts we now apply with a certain degree of bias, whether deliberate or not. In Merckx’s time, the term ‘Monument’, which today defines the stature of a rider’s palmarès and heavily shapes the calendar of the sport’s top names, didn’t exist in the same way. In fact, it didn’t exist at all.

Of course, some races held greater prestige even then. But it’s worth noting that, even after the Second World War, La Flèche Wallonne was considered more important than Liège–Bastogne–Liège by many, just to give one example. In fact, under the Super Prestige Pernod (SPP), the long-standing precursor to the World Cup that ran for 29 consecutive years until 1987, Flèche featured in three more editions (24) than Liège (21).

Even the 7 major one-week stage races we talk about today did not carry the same weight in cycling’s past. Some, like the Itzulia, only returned to the calendar in 1969 and with far less importance than they hold today. And major races of the current era, such as Strade Bianche, simply didn’t exist.

The truth is, if we want to compare titles and eras, we need to take several factors into account. In the 1970s, at a time when the sport was already professionalised, riders competed far more than today’s average pro. It is rare to find a Merckx season with fewer than 70 days of racing, a figure that Pogačar often does not reach.

"I'm coming for you"

Competitions like the Tour de France also featured split stages, offering more chances for dominant riders who, like Merckx, enjoyed a clear edge in an era of more limited gearing. The Belgian was an all-rounder, fast, powerful and able to climb, even if he wasn’t a pure climber like Luis Ocaña, one of his great rivals at the Tour.

Finally, it’s important to highlight that until the 1980s, cycling was a far less global sport. The calendar, teams and peloton were largely confined to the five historic cycling nations: Italy, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain. This naturally limited the emergence of talents from countries with less tradition in the sport, as is now the case with Slovenia or Denmark.

Even so, only 29 of the 153 victories Merckx had collected by the age of 26 years and 7 months, Pogačar’s current age, were achieved in Belgium. Merckx was a rock star and cycling was a popular, lucrative sport for its biggest names.

@Cycling Report

Quality and quantity

Eddy Merckx holds nearly every relevant record in our sport: most professional wins (279), most Grand Tours (11), most Tour de France wins (5), most Monument victories (19) and most World Championships (3), even if he shares a few of them. He also set the prestigious hour record in 1972… but the hour record sporting, cultural and economical dimension is no longer as impactful as it was up until Miguel Indurain’s record in 1994.

Listing Merckx’s records is almost pointless: he holds nearly all that matter. Pogačar, on the other hand, is getting closer to some of these feats. He’s contested the intangible title of the greatest spring cyclist in history during his recent run through the classics, although it’s tough to match what Merckx did in 1973 (Laigueglia, Omloop, Gent-Wevelgem, Amstel, Roubaix, Liège and podium finishes in RVV and Liège). Not bad. It’s debatable whether Pogačar’s 2024 season is the best of all time, but Merckx’s numbers still remain overwhelming.

Pogačar is willing to fight a battle that is almost impossible to win. He has secured 6 consecutive podiums in the Monuments, starting from Liège 2024, becoming the first cyclist in history to achieve this. Fun fact: he is the only one to have raced in all the monuments of the current 2025 season. Only Merckx, Pogačar, and Kelly have made it to the podium in the first 4 monuments of a season. Only they and Van der Poel have won at least 2 monuments in 3 consecutive years. They are the constant in the exception.

At 26 years and 7 months, Merckx had 10 Monuments, 5 Grand Tours, and 2 World Championships, while Pogačar has one victory fewer than the Belgian in each category.

Although it might be a somewhat pointless exercise given what has been discussed, I’m sharing two graphs that are at least interesting. On one hand, there are the annual victories of each of them until the month of April in the season when they turned 27. On the other, there’s the ProCyclingStats points scale, given the lack of UCI points, to compare their performance in each season.

@Cycling Report

@Cycling Report

Rivals and suspicions

One of the arguments used to downplay Merckx’s achievements is the quality of the rivals he faced… but this is based on a fallacy.

While it’s true that the average level of the peloton might not have been as high back then, due to professionalisation and dedication, the reality is that Merckx didn’t just face the best of his generation, but also legendary talents like De Vlaeminck, Ocaña, Gimondi, Maertens or Fuente, each on their own terrain.

Similarly, Pogačar faces contenders like Van der Poel, who could be the best classic rider in history, Evenepoel, the best time triallist of his time (among many other things), and Vingegaard, the best pure climber of the 21st century, not to mention battles with modern greats like Roglic, Van Aert or Alaphilippe.

Rivers flow into the sea, the sun rises in the mornings, and in cycling we always end up talking about doping. It’s part of the landscape.

This topic takes us back to a time when sports medicine was very different from what it is now, just as the rules or controls. The society views on cheating were also vastly different. Despite these contextual caveats, the facts are clear: Eddy Merckx tested positive three times during his career, once in the 1969 Giro d’Italia. That first instance was more than just an affront to the Belgians, who saw it as a deliberate attempt to pave the way for Gimondi.

Pogačar, on the other hand, has never tested positive for doping. Unfortunately, this alone is no guarantee, as history has shown us time and time again. There are suspicions about his victories across such varied terrains, the ease of some of his wins, and the sitting attacks he made recently in Flèche and Liège, seemingly making his rivals look like children. But nothing has been proven and his defeats also prove him human. The past of his mentors does not help.

The crown

For Pogačar to be considered over Merckx in a few years is a very difficult challenge. Almost impossible. He needs to keep winning at this pace, which in itself is a very tough task, for at least 5 or 6 more seasons. The total number of victories is impossible to overcome… and the number of grand tours and monuments is probably the same.

Pogačar is already the best in our history for those of us who grew up with cycling in the 90s and yes, he can rival Merckx in bringing back the epic side of the sport, with long-distance attacks, iconic photos, and the ambition to enter history by taking on challenges that should be foreign to him, like Paris-Roubaix. And like Merckx, he competes from February to October, believing that a second place is a failure, no matter where it happens.

To truly be a contender for the eternal throne, Pogačar should do something Merckx, due to the context already explained, didn’t do: win everything: the 3 Grand Tours, the 5 Monuments, the World Championship, the Olympic gold and the 7 major one-week tours. Though, even with this difficult task (he still needs the La Vuelta, Sanremo, Roubaix, and Olympics), I doubt he would achieve it.

The symbolic title of best ever isn’t always for the one who wins the most. Bill Russell won more championships than Jordan, or Pelé won more World Cups than Maradona, but being an icon transcends volume. Perhaps being the cyclist with the most World Championships (4) and Tour de France titles (6) will legitimately open the debate for being the greatest of all time. However, he wouldn’t be the first to surpass the 5 Tour record, though who knows, maybe he’ll be the first to achieve it and maintain it over time and in his trophy cabinet.

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