Looking at other sports, they all seem to have various sources ranking its performers based on several factors like achievements, talent, longevity, etc. I don’t see the same thing for cycling: many lists that I see are either incomplete, not extensive enough, or just simple mathematical computations. In reality, this might be because such a ranking is not very useful beyond sparking arguments between friends in a bar. But arguments between friends in a bar are a very fun way to spend an evening. Hence why I decided to take it upon myself to finally, once and for all, settle who is worthy of a place in the definitive, all-encompassing, undisputed, “100 Greatest Road Cyclists Ever” list!
Just kidding. About the “definitive, all-encompassing, undisputed” part. Not about the “I’ll make a list” part. That part is true.
Now, I don’t mean to take this exercise too seriously and intend to use as a way to delve into the past of this sport and gain some knowledge about riders I may never even have heard of. Or riders I may have known but not their accomplishments. With this being said, I will take this seriously and do my best to make sure that the list is as accurate as possible.
After this brief introduction I would like to mention some issues and limitations of this exercise:
- Road cyclists only.
- A rider’s cultural relevance was ignored. For example, Joaquim Agostinho and Richard Carapaz were/are two crucially important riders in the history of two countries. However, their accomplishments are not, in my view, at the level of those of some the riders that will be mentioned in the list. Joaquim Agostinho might be more important to Portugal than some other rider is to his country, but this cultural impact was not taken into consideration.
- In the past (especially before WWII) there weren’t as many races as there are today. The list does not account for this difference. Hypothetically, a rider that would have won the Tour and the Giro in 1934 will be ranked lower than a rider who would have won the Giro/Tour/Vuelta in 1935, even though there was no Vuelta to win in 1934.
- The importance of races in the past was not the same as it is today. The Vuelta a España didn’t even exist until 1935, while the appropriately named “Old Lady”, the Liége-Bastogne-Liége, began in 1892. I have been watching cycling for the past 20 years so I do not have the knowledge about which was the most important race in the 1924 season. Did riders consider the Milan San-Remo a top one-day race or was the Paris-Roubaix already more prestigious? I don’t know the answer to this question for every race in the calendar but it seems clear that the importance of races stayed more or less stable through the generations by looking at the list of participants. Hence, there is some recency bias in terms of the importance of each race in a riders’ palmarés.
- Greatest ≠ Best. Jan Ullrich might be the most talented rider I ever saw live until Tadej Pogacar but all that talent didn’t always translate into wins.
- The ranking is made as of the end of the 2021 season. No result after this threshold is considered.
- “Off the road” incidents are ignored.
- With more than a century of racing, only picking 100 riders for a ranking will inevitably leave some very, very strong names out.
- The ranking will be posted over the next few months to help with the lack of cycling during the winter period.