Greg LeMond
Alberto Contador
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Dead even across the measured categories. Our all-time ranking places Greg LeMond at #9 and Alberto Contador at #12.
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The case for Greg LeMond
The rider who made cycling global, LeMond became the first non-European to win the Tour de France in 1986, breaking the sport open to America and beyond. He won three Tours, in 1986, 1989 and 1990, and two World road titles, in 1983 and 1989. His 1989 victory over Laurent Fignon by eight seconds, the closest margin in Tour history, came on the final-day time trial where he used aerodynamic bars and a teardrop helmet to overturn a 50-second deficit, a landmark in the sport's embrace of technology. Extraordinarily, he did it after nearly dying in a 1987 hunting accident that left more than thirty shotgun pellets in his body, including near his heart. LeMond raced clean through the dawning EPO era, and his career stands as both a sporting and a moral high point.
The case for Alberto Contador
El Pistolero was the most explosive Grand Tour climber of his generation, a rider who attacked where others calculated. Contador won all three Grand Tours, a feat achieved by only a handful of riders, and his official palmares lists seven Grand Tour titles, two Tours de France, two Giri d'Italia and three Vueltas a Espana, after two further wins were annulled following a contested clenbuterol case. His signature was the sudden, dancing acceleration on a steep gradient, and his rivalries with Andy Schleck and later Chris Froome produced some of the most dramatic mountain racing of the 2000s and 2010s. Aggressive to the end, he attacked from distance even in his final Vuelta in 2017, winning atop the Angliru on the day he retired, ensuring he left the sport exactly as he had raced it.