Miguel Indurain
Mark Cavendish
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Mark Cavendish leads 2 of 2 categories. Our all-time ranking places Miguel Indurain at #6 and Mark Cavendish at #11.
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The case for Miguel Indurain
Big Mig was the first rider to win five consecutive Tours de France, from 1991 to 1995, an unprecedented run built on time-trial power that few could comprehend. A tall, powerful rider with a famously low resting heart rate, Indurain would demolish his rivals against the clock, then mark them in the mountains without ever needing to attack. He won seven Grand Tours in all, adding the Giro d'Italia in 1992 and 1993 to complete Giro-Tour doubles in both years. In 1994 he set the Hour Record at 53.040 kilometres, and in 1995 he took the World time-trial title before winning Olympic time-trial gold on home-continent roads at Atlanta in 1996. His calm, understated dominance made him a national hero in Spain and ushered in a new era of specialised Grand Tour riding.
The case for Mark Cavendish
The greatest sprinter in cycling history, the Manx Missile rewrote the record book at the discipline he mastered. In 2024 Cavendish won his 35th Tour de France stage, surpassing Eddy Merckx's long-standing record of 34, and across all three Grand Tours he took 55 stage victories. He won the 2011 World Championship, the 2009 Milan-San Remo, and roughly 165 professional races. His peak, built on the flawless HTC lead-out train, saw him beat every rival of his era in the bunch sprints, and his 2021 comeback to equal Merckx's record after years of illness and doubt ranks among the sport's great redemption stories. Where all-rounders are measured by Grand Tours and Monuments, Cavendish stands alone as the finest pure finisher the peloton has ever seen.