Eddy Merckx
Sean Kelly
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Eddy Merckx leads 3 of 3 categories. Our all-time ranking places Eddy Merckx at #1 and Sean Kelly at #7.
The case for Eddy Merckx
The Cannibal is the consensus greatest cyclist ever, and it is not close. Merckx won a scarcely believable 525 races across his career, a figure no rider has approached. He took 11 Grand Tours, five Tours de France, five Giri d'Italia and a Vuelta, three World road titles and a record 19 Monuments spanning every one-day Classic. He won 34 Tour stages while also claiming its points and mountains classifications, dominating flat sprints, mountains and time trials alike. In 1972 he set the Hour Record at 49.431 kilometres in Mexico City. His nickname came from his refusal to ease off even when a race was won, and his combination of range, longevity and win rate remains the benchmark against which every rider is measured.
The case for Sean Kelly
The greatest Classics rider of his generation and one of the toughest cyclists ever, Kelly won nine Monuments across a career of brutal consistency: two Milan-San Remo, two Paris-Roubaix, two Liege-Bastogne-Liege and three Il Lombardia. He also won the 1988 Vuelta a Espana, took four Tour de France green jerseys, and amassed roughly 193 professional victories. His seven consecutive Paris-Nice titles from 1982 to 1988 remain a record for that prestigious stage race, and when the UCI introduced its world rankings in 1984, Kelly was the inaugural number one, a position he held for years. A sprinter who could also survive the cobbles, climb and endure foul weather, the quiet farmer's son from Carrick-on-Suir won across every kind of one-day terrain the sport could offer.