Top 50 Cyclists of all time

Who is the greatest cyclist?

Whenever you bring up that topic around a group of cyclists, invariably two names are brought up, Armstrong and Merckx.

Well, Eric Bowen has on his site, the Virtual Musette, has developed a scoring system to rank the greatest riders of the Modern Era (from WWII to present).

Using Eric's system, here are the 50 greatest riders of the Modern Era:

1. Eddy Merckx 410.5

2. Bernard Hinault 232.5

3. Fausto Coppi 219.5

4. Gino Bartali 213.0

5. Jacques Anquetil 184.0

6. Rik Van Looy 152.0

7. Sean Kelly 146.5

8. Roger De Vlaeminck 139.5

9. Francesco Moser 131.5

10. Lance Armstrong 116.5

11. Felice Gimondi 114.0

12. Louison Bobet 109.5

13. Miguel Indurain 98.0

14. Freddy Maertens 97.5

15. Ferdi Kubler 96.0

16. Joop Zoetemelk 91.5

17. Tony Rominger 89.5

18. Laurent Jalabert 88.5
19. Fiorenzo Magni 87.0
20. Giuseppe Saronni 83.0
21. Erik Zabel 81.0
22. Rik Van Steenbergen 73.5
23. Raymond Poulidor 69.0
24. Jan Janssen 65.0
25. Greg LeMond 65.0
26. Mario Cipollini 63.5
27. Luis Ocana 59.5
28. Laurent Fignon 58.5
29. Franco Bitossi 56.0
30. Federico Bahamontes 55.5
31. Paolo Bettini 55.0
32. Charly Gaul 53.5
33. Johan Museeuw 53.0
34. Jan Ullrich 52.0
35. Alberto Contador 52.0
36. Jan Raas 51.0
37. Lucien Van Impe 50.0
38. Moreno Argentin 48.5
39. Stephen Roche 48.5
40. Hugo Koblet 48.0
41. Claudio Chiapucci 48.0
42. Gianni Bugno 47.5
43. Alberic Schotte 46.5
44. Alex Zulle 46.0
45. Michele Bartoli 44.0
46. Alessandro Petacchi 43.0
47. Walter Godefroot 42.5
48. Tom Boonen 42.0
49. Herman Van Springel 41.5
50. Charly Mottet 41

By this, you can see that Eddy Merckx is, in fact, number 1 by a large margin over Lance (number 10).

The way Eric came up with his scoring is by assigning points for victories earned in the following ten categories:

• The Monuments
• The World Championship Road Race*
• Classics/Olympics/Time Trial Championships
• Semi-Classics/National Championships
• Minor Tours 
• Grand Tours* 
• Grand Tour Classification Competitions (Mountains and Points) 
• Grand Tour Stages 
• Season Long Competitions 
• Bonus: The UCI World Hour Record  
• *Points also awarded for podium spots. 

It is no surprise that many of the top spots are occupied by greats such as Bartali, Hinault, and Anquetil. What is interesting is how the current crop of cyclists, such as Armstrong, Bettini (31), Contador (35), Petacchi (43) and Boonen (48) are ranking in the top 50. It definately shows where many of the current cyclists, who prepare for, and race mainly in the Grand Tours stack up against the earlier riders, who raced in everything from the spring classics, to the Grand Tours to everything inbetween.

If you are interested in the history of bicycle racing. go check out Eric's blog http://www.thevirtualmusette.com/. It is certainly an interesting read.

I also have to give credit to John and Scott from the Velocast podcast for alerting me to the existince of Eric's blog. These two produce a great podcast, and are (partly because of their accents) very enjoyable to listen to. You can find them at http://www.velocast.co.uk/