Tadej Pogacar
Greg LeMond
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Tadej Pogacar leads 2 of 3 categories. Our all-time ranking places Tadej Pogacar at #2 and Greg LeMond at #9.
The case for Tadej Pogacar
The most complete rider since Merckx, Pogacar has collapsed the old boundaries between Grand Tour men and Classics hunters. As of the 2025 season he owns four Tours de France, won in 2020, 2021, 2024 and 2025, plus the 2024 Giro d'Italia and back-to-back World titles in 2024 and 2025. In 2024 he completed the Giro-Tour-Worlds Triple Crown, the first rider to do so since Stephen Roche in 1987. He also dominates the Monuments, with a run of Il Lombardia wins, multiple Liege-Bastogne-Liege victories and a first Tour of Flanders, passing 100 career wins before turning 27. His willingness to attack from enormous distances has redefined the sport's tactics, and at his age the ceiling on his numbers is not yet in sight.
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.