Eddy Merckx: Why 'the cannibal' is the greatest cyclist of all time

Considered to be the greatest cyclist of all time, Eddy Merckx won an estimated 525 races on the international calendar in his 18-year professional cycling career, including 11 Grand Tours, all five Monuments, three World Championships and several victories on the track. 

Many people know him simply by his nickname, 'the cannibal', for his ravenous desire for victories. His conquests cover all types of terrain and race types, demonstrating his strength and stamina in not only the number of events but the quality of victories.

Édouard Louis Joseph, Baron Merckx was born in the Flanders region of Belgium on June 17, 1945. He competed in several sports as a young child, including tennis and soccer, but preferred to ride his bicycle. He began racing as a teenager and won his first race at the age of 16. The next year he won the national amateur title in the road race. Two years later, in 1964, he won his first of two Belgian national amateur track titles in the Madison, riding with Patrick Sercu, and represented Belgium at the Olympic Games in road cycling.

He turned professional during the 1965 season, winning a handful of races with Solo-Superia. In 1966 he switched to the Peugeot-BP-Michelin team and won his first major one-day race, Milan-San Remo. Two years later, with Faema, he won the Giro d'Italia for his first Grand Tour title. He would go on to win four more Giros, as well as the Tour de France five times and the Vuelta a España once. 

The five-time Giro champion continues to hold the record for wearing the maglia rosa for 77 days. In the stretch between 1970 and 1974, Merckx scored the Giro-Tour double three times and the Vuelta-Giro once (in 1973 when he did not race the Tour), with 1974 marking a rare triple crown when he also won the UCI Road Worlds. He is the only rider still today who has won the Giro and Tour in the same year three times; Fausto Coppi, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Induráin have accomplished the feat twice.

One of his top career achievements, 34 stage wins at the Tour de France, was surpassed in 2024 by British sprinter Mark Cavendish, who scored his 35th career stage win at the Tour. While Cavendish amassed his stage wins across 10 editions of the French Grand Tour in sprint finishes, Merckx collected his victories in six editions of the Tour in a variety of challenges from climbing days to flat finishes and time trials.

Merckx won his first Tour de France in his inaugural appearance in 1969, wearing the yellow jersey for an incredible 19 days. He would also finish in Paris as the winner of the Points classification, the King of the Mountains classification, a Combination classification and also earn the overall combativity prize. No other rider has ever swept the major classification prizes on offer in a single Tour. In total, he has worn the maillot jaune 96 times.

One-day races and the track

Also in the record books remains his conquests of the top one-day races, one of a handful of riders to not only win all five Monuments, but he is the only one to have won them all at least two times - Milan-San Remo, Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix, Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Il Lombardia. Of those five one-day races, he won Milan-San Remo eight times.

In an interview with Cyclingnews in 2005, Merckx said the reason he did so well at the early-season Milan-San Remo was attributed to his winter racing on the track - winning Six Days of Ghent seven times - and participation in winter sports.

"I did a lot of six-days and only rested for two to three weeks. I would go on vacation to the mountains, but when I was there, I did cross-country skiing. So I was always busy," Merckx recollected. 

"With regards to weight, it is difficult if you put too much on in the winter to be good at the start of the season. That is why I did so well in Milan-San Remo because I was racing in the winter. Maybe the other riders were not doing as much. I was racing on the track and generally kept in shape, so after 250 kilometres I could beat them."

In 1972 he set the World Hour record at the Mexico City Velodrome, marking a distance of 49.431 kilometres. The Madison was his favourite track event and across his career, he won six elite Belgian national titles with Patrick Sercu, as well as three European championships.

Career reflection

He concluded his pro racing career in 1978, but retirement was not in his vocabulary as he launched the Eddy Merckx bike brand, with road bikes available by 1980. He also worked as the director of Belgium's national team for 11 years, managed the Tour of Flanders and helped organise the Tour of Qatar, starting the race as a co-owner in 2002.

One race Merckx never won at the Olympic Games. During his cycling career, he was only eligible to represent Belgium one time, at the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games, as professionals were not allowed to compete. He finished 12th in the road race.

What was the best victory of his career? He could not point to just one race when he spoke to Cyclingnews, noting that his Hour Record was special because he beat Ole Ritter by 700 metres. But his first Grand Tour wins in France and Italy stood out the most. He said his first Giro was "important" for his career, with winning "the stage to Tres Cime di Lavaredo, that was the best stage that I did in my career".

"Ah, for sure, one is the 1969 Tour de France. That was the best one," he said."It was also 30 years since a Belgian rider had won the Tour de France. So it was a dream, a gift. The yellow jersey was magic."

One of the reasons that the Tour win was so special in 1969 was that it followed one of the few dark periods of the Belgian's career. His Peugeot-BP-Michelin teammate and friend Tom Simpson died two years before at the Tour while climbing Mont Ventoux. It was determined that his death, ruled as heat exhaustion, had been intensified by by amphetamines and alcohol detected in his system. The UCI then implemented mandatory doping controls for the next year.

After winning the 1968 Giro, Merckx then was on form in the maglia rosa through 15 stages but organisers announced he had tested positive at an in-race anti-doping test, and he had to withdraw though maintaining innocence. With cycling fans and many media outlets suspicious of the test results, which allowed an Italian rider to win the race, a division of the UCI held a meeting to review the circumstances and reversed the decision to suspend Merckx for 30 days, which would have kept him out of the Tour. 

Almost 80 and all about bikes

Merckx said he never based his season around the Tour de France, but just tried to win as many races as possible. Times have changed since the 1960s and 1970s with how riders prepare for specific races on the calendar, what types of equipment are available and so many other elements. Merckx said it is difficult to compare each generation on the same level. 

Nearing the age of 80 Merckx remains in the news. He was at the 2021 Tour de France to personally congratulate Mark Cavendish when he tied the mark for most Tour stage wins. Three years later, when Cavendish broke Merckx's Tour de France stage win record, Merckx congratulated him on social media.

Earlier in 2024 the brand that still bears his name, Merckx, launched a new range of road and gravel bikes, the business he started now jointly owned by Belgian manufacturer Ridley's holding company. 

At the age of 79 he still rode a bike, but not as hard or as often. A fall when riding his bicycle across a railway crossing in December 2024 caused a fractured hip, which required a total hip replacement surgery. He was expected to make a full recovery.

That same month, Eddy and Claudine Merckx celebrated their 57th wedding anniversary. They have two children, daughter Sabrina and son Axel, who competed as a professional cyclist from 1993-2007 and won a bronze medal in the road race at the Athens Olympic Games.