Steady, Eddy
We have a new GOAT, according to the GOAT
There are a few things in cycling that are taken as given. The Tour de France is the biggest race of the year. Paris-Roubaix is the iconic one-day race. The Giro d’Italia is very hard and often chaotic, and the Vuelta a España is quite relaxed and yet also often chaotic. And Eddy Merckx is the greatest cyclist of all time.
These are truisms in a sport which is often really quite confusing and hard to figure out. To a newcomer there are many things that make no sense at all. Why is the biggest race of the year right in the middle of the season, and not a final crescendo to all that has come before? Why do some of the best riders of the day have no chance of winning this biggest race? Why do a few riders set out at the start of each race on a mission called the breakaway, even though nine times out of ten they are doomed to fail?
These are good questions and questions that require quite a bit of explanation. But one question has always been easy to answer, at least since the mid-1970s. Who is the best rider to ever race a bike? Eddy Merckx.
Until now, apparently. After Tadej Pogačar managed to win the world championship road race in a simultaneously surprising and not-surprising way, we have a new GOAT. And that’s according to the GOAT himself.
You wouldn’t have got long odds on Pogačar winning the worlds this year. It may have been one of the ever-dwindling number of races he hasn’t won but the course suited him and when the course suits Tadej, Tadej usually wins. It’s the way he won it that prompted more talk of whether we are seeing the best to ever do it live in the flesh.
He attacked with over 100 kilometres still to race. For those new to cycling that’s a ridiculous move. Pogačar himself said after the race (whether earnestly or not) that he didn’t know what he was thinking. There was an era in cycling where such attacks were common but that era doesn’t have many moving pictures to actually document it. He didn’t ride alone for 100 kilometres but attacking that far out is something, as the man himself says, that even Merckx didn’t do.
The attack was shocking, and predictable. It’s s shocking because it’s ridiculous. Riders don’t attack from 100 kilometres out and still win the race. But it’s predictable because Pog has proven over the last few years that he can attack from 100 kilometres out and yes, still win the race. His attacks make fans sit up and say “what?!” and then just as swiftly, “of course.”
It’s this way of riding, this swashbuckling, attack-at-will style that makes comparisons with Merckx seem a little less farfetched than with previous riders. Well, this style and the fact that this style often ends up with him winning the race. Many riders have had swashbuckling, attack-at-will styles but they haven’t won four grand tours (and counting), twenty six grand tour stages, the world championships and six monuments (and counting, and counting, and counting).
On The Cycling Podcast this week Daniel Friebe pointed out that Merckx at 26 had a roughly similar palmarès to what Pog has now. To be cemented as the greatest of all time, though, Pogačar has to continue his trajectory, to win even more races, to have his final numbers resemble that of the great Belgian.
But he probably will. It’s a safe assumption that Pog will go onto win many more grand tours, monuments, and really any other race that takes his fancy. We have had similar periods of dominance in cycling since Merckx but these have usually been confined to one kind of racing.
Lance Armstrong (dubiously) dominated the Tour de France for seven years, but other races were left untouched. Chris Froome seemed unbeatable in grand tours for half a decade, but wasn’t challenging in many one-day races. Mark Cavendish is the greatest sprinter the sport has ever seen, but Alpine passes are hardly quaking at the prospect of his arrival.
Pogačar is so dominant, so unbeatable, so Merckx-like because whatever the race you wouldn’t bet against him doing well. You wouldn’t bet against him winning. He’s not the greatest of all time, yet, even if Eddy himself says he is. But one day he probably will be. And that might just be a given.
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