Roger De Vlaeminck
Mark Cavendish
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Roger De Vlaeminck leads 2 of 2 categories. Our all-time ranking places Roger De Vlaeminck at #8 and Mark Cavendish at #11.
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The case for Roger De Vlaeminck
Known as Mr. Paris-Roubaix, De Vlaeminck was the supreme Classics specialist of the Merckx era, and his 11 Monument victories rank second only to Merckx himself. He won Paris-Roubaix four times, in 1972, 1974, 1975 and 1977, a feat matched only by Tom Boonen, mastering the cobbles like no one else of his generation. He added three Milan-San Remo, a Liege-Bastogne-Liege, two Il Lombardia and a Tour of Flanders, and won the 1975 cyclocross World Championship for good measure, underlining his versatility on rough terrain. With well over 250 career wins, De Vlaeminck was a rider who could sprint, endure and read a Classic perfectly, and his duels with Merckx and Freddy Maertens made Belgium the beating heart of one-day racing in the 1970s.
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.