Eddy Merckx

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Lore & Background

Merckx's rise was meteoric. After winning 80 races as an amateur, he turned professional on 29 April 1965 with Solo–Superia. His first major victory came in the Milan–San Remo a year later, after switching to Peugeot–BP–Michelin. After the 1967 season, Merckx moved to Faema, and won the Giro d'Italia, his first Grand Tour victory. Three times between 1970 and 1974, Merckx completed a Grand Tour double. His final double also coincided with winning the elite men's road race at the UCI Road World Championships to make him the first rider to accomplish cycling's Triple Crown. Merckx broke the hour record in October 1972, extending the record by almost 800 metres. He is one of only three riders to have won all five 'Monuments' (Milan–San Remo, Tour of Flanders, Paris–Roubaix, Liège–Bastogne–Liège, and the Giro di Lombardia) and the only one to have won each at least twice.

In Their Own Story

The morning of the 1974 Tour's final time trial, the air over Paris was still and heavy. Merckx sat at the start line in his Molteni red, legs already humming from a week of controlled destruction. Van Impe had been his shadow for days, a respectable second, a man who had earned his place. But as Merckx clipped in and rolled forward, the crowd noise shifted from cheering to something closer to awe. He was not racing; he was completing a sentence. The seconds ticked past, the kilometres fell away, and when he crossed the line the margin was so vast that the commentators ran out of superlatives. He peeled off his jersey, draped it over his handlebars, and rode the last few hundred metres in his undershirt, as if the Tour were already a memory he was filing away. The peloton, still a few minutes back, watched a man who had just eaten the race whole.

Reader's Guide

The Yellow Jersey (General Classification) measures the rider with the lowest cumulative time across all Tour stages. Each victory carried a different texture: 1969 was his coronation, a young rider overwhelming the field with mountain attacks; 1972 was a war of attrition where his ability to recover from setbacks proved decisive; and 1974 was pure domination, a twenty-minute cushion over Van Impe that made the final time trial a formality. The number five places him in the same rarefied company as Anquetil, Hinault, and Indurain, but Merckx's five came with a versatility none of them matched. The Green Jersey (Points Classification) rewards consistent placings in intermediate sprints and stage finishes. Merckx collected it multiple times, a testament to the fact that his attacks were not just mountain-specific—he was present at every sprint, every intermediate checkpoint, every chaotic bunch finish. He did not merely survive the flat stages; he won them. The Polka-Dot Jersey (Mountains Classification) went to Merckx in 1969, his first Tour. It was a statement: the man who would go on to win five Tours was already proving he could outclimb the specialists. One polka-dot title may seem modest, but in the context of a rider who won five overall titles, it confirms that his mountain dominance was not an afterthought but a foundation. Finally, his 34 Tour de France stage victories remain a record that speaks to a different kind of greatness. It is not about winning the race; it is about winning the race repeatedly, in every terrain, across five different Tours. No one has come close. The number is less a statistic than a monument.

Did You Know?

• Merckx got his first bicycle at the age of three or four and competed in his first race in 1961.
• His first victory came at Petit-Enghien in October 1961.
• He broke the hour record in October 1972, extending the record by almost 800 metres.
• Merckx is the only rider to have won each of the five Monuments at least twice.
• He coached the Belgian national cycling team for eleven years, stopping in 1996.