Profiling The Cannibal - Eddy Merckx In The Grand Tours

Eddy Merckx is widely considered as the best cyclist ever to have lived. Best known by his nickname 'The Cannibal', he won a staggering 525 races as a professional, and a total of eleven grand tours. He dominated in his peak, and riders rarely found ways to get past him that didn't involve injury or cheating.

He made his grand tour debut at the 1967 Giro d'Italia, and gave the cycling world a taste of what was to come. He finished a strong ninth, and won two stages of the race. He also came second in the points classification, and third in the mountains classification. Later that year, he won his maiden world championships, and returned to the Giro the next year donned in the rainbow jersey.

That year he won all three competitions, taking the overall title infront of Italians Vittorio Adorni and Felice Gimondi. Moreover, he won three stages on the road, and another after a drug test disqualified Gianni Motta as winner of stage three. He also wore the leader's maglia rosa for a total of twelve days out of the twenty two. A staggering maiden victory, which showed signs of more to come.

Merckx returned to the Giro as defending champion in 1969. The race was going well, Merckx had won four stages, and by stage sixteen looked comfortable in the maglia rosa. However, once the race reached Savona, Merckx was expelled after an extremely controversial doping control. Despite protesting, Merckx was out of the race, and furious about it.

To show he was the best grand tour rider that year, Merckx entered the Tour de France. The race was a massacre, Merckx won the general classification, points classification, mountains classification, combination classification and the combativity classification, the only time in the race's history that this had ever been done. It still never has. He also won a mind-blowing six stages. The Frenchmen Roger Pingeon and Raymond Poulidor, who completed the podium, had no answer, and the race was a formality all the way to Paris. The 1969 Tour also marked the beginning of a period where Merckx would win all the grand tours he entered up until the 1975 Tour de France.

Merckx returned to the Giro d'Italia once again in 1970, and put to bed the demons of 1969 with a convincing win over Felice Gimondi. He took three stages for good measure, and headed to his first Tour as defending champion. It was another dominating Tour that was to come. Merckx won by more than twelve minutes, an incredible time gap, and picked up the mountains classification along the way. He also won a ridiculous eight stages! He had completed the prestigious Giro-Tour double, a tough challenge that only a few complete.

In 1971, Merckx skipped the Giro d'Italia, preferring instead to focus his year on the later half of the season, namely the Tour de France and the world championships. It was a succesful season, but the Tour de France came not without complications. Luis Ocana, a talented Spanish climber, was over eight minutes ahead of Merckx, when he crashed on the fourteenth stage and abandoned the race as a result. Merckx refused to wear the yellow jersey on stage fifteen out of solidarity for Ocana, and nearly left the race. However, Tour directors convinced him to stay, and he won the Tour after a convincing attack on stage seventeen gained him more than two minutes. Later in the year, Merckx was victorious in the world championships, taking his second title.

The 1972 Giro d'Italia saw the return of The Cannibal, and Merckx showed the race what it had missed the year before. He won the race by over five minutes from Spanish duo Jose Manuel Fuente and Francisco Galdos. He also won four stages to assert his dominance even more. He entered the Tour de France once again, and rid himself of the doubters that said he was unable to win the Tour again by thrashing the opposition by over ten minutes. He also won both the points and combination classifications, along with six stages.

In 1973, Merckx rode the Vuelta a Espana for the first and only time in his career. The Spanish race had waited years for The Cannibal to grace it with his presence, and Merckx did not disappoint. He won the race, ahead of old rival Luis Ocana. He won three other classifications, and took six stages. The victory meant he was the third man to win all three grand tours in his career. He went on to win the Giro d'Italia that summer, once again dominating a grand tour. Eddy Merckx decided not to enter the Tour de France that year, to avoid angry French fans.

1974 saw the last two grand tour victories of Merckx's career. He won his fifth Giro d'Italia by one of the narrowest margins in the race's history - twelve seconds ahead of Gianbattista Baronchelli. He then returned to the Tour de France, and was much more dominant in this race, winning by eight minutes. In his final Tour victory he took eight stages, and had completed his eleventh grand tour victory. He raced in two more Tours, finishing second and sixth, and one more Giro, finishing eighth. 

By the end of Merckx's career, he had won eleven grand tours, nineteen classifications in the races, and a staggering sixty four stages in grand tours. He holds the record for most Tour de France stage wins at thirty four. It is not hard to see why he earned himself the nickname 'The Cannibal', and why he is widely considered as the greatest cyclist ever. It is hard to see any man ever surpassing Merckx in that title.

Keep it Lanterne Rouge for the next article in this series, profiling the grand tour career of the legendary Bernard Hinault.