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Sven Nys
Sven Nys won the cyclocross World Championship twice, in 2005 and again in 2013 at age 37, and topped the sport's World Cup overall standings seven times across his career — in 1999-2000, 2001-02, 2004-05, 2005-06, 2006-07, and 2008-09 — a record that stood for years as effectively unbeatable. He retired with more than 300 individual race wins and nine Belgian national championships, in a country where cyclocross draws crowds and television audiences comparable to a major team sport, plus five additional national mountain bike titles reflecting his off-road versatility beyond cyclocross specifically. Nicknamed "the Cannibal of Baal" after his hometown, Nys continued winning major races into his late thirties before retiring, and his seven-time World Cup overall record stood until Mathieu van der Poel eventually broke his career World Cup win total years later. His combination of two World Championship titles and his seven-time World Cup overall record has made Nys the rider most universally regarded as the greatest in Belgian cyclocross history.
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Zdeněk Štybar
Zdeněk Štybar won three elite cyclocross World Championships — in 2010, 2011, and 2014 — after already claiming two U-23 world titles in 2005 and 2006, giving him five combined world championships across his cyclocross career before he transitioned to road racing. On the road, Štybar won three cobbled classics — the 2015 Strade Bianche, and both Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and the E3 BinckBank Classic in 2019 — but Paris-Roubaix specifically eluded him despite repeated close calls, including a 2013 near-miss after being held up by a spectator while leading, and runner-up finishes in 2015 and 2017. His technical bike-handling skill, developed through years of navigating cyclocross's mud and off-camber turns, translated directly into the precision required on Paris-Roubaix's cobblestone sectors, even though the race's biggest prize remained just out of reach across his career. His combination of five combined elite and U-23 cyclocross world titles and his subsequent podium-level road classics career has made Štybar one of the most complete cyclocross-to-road crossover riders of his generation.
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