06/17/2026
Eddy Merckx turns 81 today 🎂
He grew up in Meensel-Kiezegem, a small Flemish village, and became the most dominant athlete cycling has ever produced. Arguably the most dominant in any sport.
They called him "The Cannibal," and it was about hunger, not cruelty.
He didn't race to win enough. He raced to win everything, stages and sprints and mountains alike. Rivals would roll up to the start line already beaten, hoping only to finish somewhere near him.
And the record backs up every word of it.
Across 18 seasons, Merckx won 525 races. Read that again. Not stages, races. It's a number so big it stopped sounding like sport a long time ago.
The headline wins alone are hard to believe:
- 11 Grand Tours, made up of five Tours de France, five Giros and one Vuelta. Nobody else has come close.
- All five Monuments, with a record 19 Monument wins in total.
- Three World Championships.
- The Hour Record, that lonely, brutal test of one man against the clock.
In the Tour de France by itself, he took five overall titles and 34 stage wins, and he wore the yellow jersey for 111 stages. More than any rider in history.
Then there's Milan-San Remo. The longest one-day race on the calendar, and he won it seven times. That record has stood for over half a century.
What gets me isn't the volume. It's the range.
Cobbles, climbs, sprints, three-week tours, the track. Every kind of cycling that existed, he beat. Modern stars get measured against him all the time, and most of them, Pogacar included, politely wave the comparison away.
There's only one Cannibal.
He did all of it without power meters, carbon frames or a radio in his ear. Just legs, lungs and a flat refusal to ever sit up.
So raise a bottle today to the greatest who ever turned a pedal.
Happy 81st, Eddy. The sport you devoured still owes you.
