PART 2 OF THE GOAT The Greatest Cyclist Of All Time

Eddy Merckx & Tadej Pogačar: A Comparison of Two Extraordinary Professional Racing Records

Eddy Merckx and Tadej Pogacar race results that blow the peloton apart!

Comparing Eddy Merckx and Tadej Pogačar means comparing two riders who have dominated in strikingly different eras. Merckx remains the benchmark for total career accumulation and all-round supremacy, while Pogačar has built one of the most explosive starts the sport has ever seen. As of 2026, Merckx’s record still stands taller in total volume, but Pogačar has already assembled a résumé that invites serious all-time comparison while his career is still in progress.

Category	Eddy Merckx	Tadej Pogačar (through 2026)
Professional wins	525	117
Tour de France overall wins	5	4
Giro d’Italia overall wins	5	1
Vuelta a España overall wins	1	0
Total Grand Tour overall wins	11	5
Tour de France stage wins	34	21
Giro d’Italia stage wins	24	6
Vuelta a España stage wins	6	3
Road world titles	3	2
Monument wins	19	13
All five Monuments won?	Yes	No, not yet
Hour Record	Yes	No

Merckx’s Record: The Gold Standard for Career Volume

Merckx’s numbers remain staggering even when adjusted for the race-heavy calendar of his time. He won 525 professional races, captured 11 Grand Tours, took 34 Tour de France stages, 24 Giro stages, and 6 Vuelta stages, claimed 19 Monument victories, and won the world road title three times. He also set the Hour Record, underscoring a range that extended beyond stage racing and one-day classics into track-based endurance achievement. The sheer breadth of those results is what makes Merckx so difficult to match: he was not merely the best stage racer or the best classics rider of his era; he was both at once, and usually by a large margin.

Pogačar’s Record: A Modern Career Moving at Historic Speed

Pogačar’s total volume is lower, but his rate of accumulation is extraordinary. By 2026 he has won 117 professional races, including four Tours de France, the 2024 Giro d’Italia, two world road titles, and 13 Monument victories. He has also added major stage-race wins such as Paris–Nice, Tirreno–Adriatico, the Critérium du Dauphiné, and the Tour de Romandie. What makes his record remarkable is how quickly it has taken shape in the compressed, highly specialised, and more selective modern calendar. In an era with fewer race days for top contenders and more targeted scheduling, Pogačar has still amassed a palmarès that already places him among the very best riders in cycling history.

Grand Tours: Merckx Still Leads on Depth and Completeness

On Grand Tours, Merckx still has the stronger overall record. His 11 overall victories—five Tours, five Giros, and one Vuelta—remain the all-time high-water mark. Pogačar’s five Grand Tour wins are already exceptional, especially because they include four Tours and a Giro, but he has not yet completed the set with a Vuelta title. Merckx also dominates the stage-win comparison, with 64 individual stage victories across the three Grand Tours compared with Pogačar’s 30. In this category, Pogačar’s brilliance is undeniable, but Merckx’s depth, longevity, and completeness still separate him.

Monuments and One-Day Racing: The Gap Is Narrower Than It Looks

Merckx’s 19 Monument victories are still the standard, and he won all five Monuments multiple times, a feat unmatched in men’s cycling. Pogačar, however, has made this part of the comparison far more interesting than many expected. By 2026 he has reached 13 Monument wins, including victories at Milan–San Remo, the Tour of Flanders, Liège–Bastogne–Liège, and Il Lombardia. He still lacks Paris–Roubaix, so Merckx retains the edge for completeness, but Pogačar’s ability to contend from steep Ardennes climbs to cobbled Flanders and now San Remo’s speed-and-tactics puzzle suggests a range that is unusually broad for a modern stage-race champion.

Era and Context Matter

Any fair comparison has to account for context. Merckx raced in a period with longer calendars, more opportunities to pile up wins, and less specialisation among elite riders. Modern cycling is more data-driven, more controlled, and far more focused on peaking for specific targets. That means Merckx’s total win count is difficult to compare directly with Pogačar’s. Even so, the comparison does not simply favour the modern rider on a rate basis. What makes Pogačar special is that he has revived an older style of all-round ambition in a modern era built to discourage it. In that sense, he resembles Merckx not because he has already matched him, but because he has reopened the question of whether one rider can dominate everything at once.

The Greatest Cyclist Of All Time

Race Results Conclusion

If the question is who has the greater professional racing record right now, the answer is still Eddy Merckx. His 525 wins, 11 Grand Tours, 19 Monuments, three world titles, and unmatched completeness across every terrain keep him at the summit. But if the question is who has come closest in the modern era to recreating that level of all-round greatness, the answer is clearly Tadej Pogačar. Merckx owns the larger career, while Pogačar owns the most compelling chase. That is what makes the comparison so fascinating: one rider defines the sport’s historical ceiling, and the other is one of the very few who has made that ceiling look reachable again.