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Eddy Merckx
Eddy Merckx dominated professional cycling from the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s so completely that he earned the nickname "The Cannibal," a reflection of a competitive drive that pushed him to win races and stages even when a wiser tactical approach would have had him conserve energy for bigger goals later in a season. Merckx won the Tour de France five times (1969-1972, 1974) and, in his debut win in 1969, became the first rider in Tour history to win the general classification, points classification, and mountains classification in the same edition — a "triple crown" no other rider has repeated since. His career win total, 525 races across every discipline of professional cycling — stage races, one-day classics, and track events — remains the highest of any professional cyclist in history, a statistic that reflects genuine dominance across the entire sport rather than specialization in a single race type the way most great cyclists' careers are built. Merckx also won all five of cycling's "Monument" classics (Milan-San Remo, Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and Il Lombardia), several of them multiple times, a combination of grand tour and one-day classics dominance that no cyclist before or since has matched, and that's central to why he's still almost universally cited as the greatest cyclist ever to race.
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Bernard Hinault
Bernard Hinault won the Tour de France five times between 1978 and 1985, and remains the last French rider to win cycling's biggest race, a drought now stretching past four decades in a country where the Tour is the sport's single most important national event. Nicknamed "The Badger" for his combative, often confrontational racing style, Hinault wasn't just a grand tour specialist — he also won cycling's Giro d'Italia three times and the Vuelta a España twice, completing multiple career sweeps across all three of cycling's three-week grand tours, a level of versatility across different course profiles that few riders in the sport's history have matched. His 1985 Tour victory came while riding with a broken nose, sustained in a mid-race crash, and while managing a complicated internal team rivalry with young teammate Greg LeMond, whom Hinault had promised to help win the following year's Tour — a promise he kept in 1986, helping deliver the first American Tour de France title. Hinault retired in 1986 having won 10 grand tours total across his career, and his combativeness both on the bike and in disputes with race organizers and cycling's governing body — he once physically confronted protesting workers blocking a stage finish — made him one of the sport's most colorful, and most respected, champions of his era.
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