Other than Merckx, who is the greatest of them all?

[Ryo Hazuki]

where is marco pantani??

 

[ultimobici]

From wikipedia it looks like Coppi was a fairly heavy amphetamines user. I guess some things never change.

Two things to bear in mind.

1. It was accepted practice.
2. It was not against the rules.

If you disagree with this, do you also agree with handing out a speeding ticket to a driver who did 100mph in 1970 on a road that had a 70mph speed limit imposed in 1975?

 

[Ryo Hazuki]

Two things to bear in mind.

1. It was accepted practice.
2. It was not against the rules.

If you disagree with this, do you also agree with handing out a speeding ticket to a driver who did 100mph in 1970 on a road that had a 70mph speed limit imposed in 1975?

welcome to the world of "cyclingfans" who don't have a freaking clue about how it used to be.

 

[luckyboy]

As much as I wanted to vote for RDV, can't really look past Hinault, Bartali + Coppi.

 

[ttrider]

Had a look at Coppis palmares, if he isnt ahead of Mercx he must be a very close second because his palmares is awesome despite being disrupted massively by the war, if it wasnt for that he would have had 5 more shots at the Giro and 7 at the tour and every indication is he would have won an awful lot of them too. Hes a clear winner of this poll and for me he must be joint top with Mercx

 

[ttrider]

Never realised how awesome Gino Bartali was though
what he achieved out of cycling is truly outstanding

 

[The Hitch]

True. The key word there is best years because Fausto was 22 when the war broke out in 1942. So Coppi was only 26 or so when he resumed racing in 1946... still a large chunk of career still ahead of him. In contrast, Gino was 5 years older than Fausto, so he was not able to race because of the war between the ages of about 27 to 32.

tut tut tut

The war broke out in 1939. 1942 is in fact known as the turning point. The Tours last race was 1939. The Giros 1940.

This strenghens your point though i guess.

 

[isayic]

I can only cite a famous quote made by an ex Tour director: "Of all the famous champions of the sport Merckx was the strongest, but Coppi was the greatest."

For me Merckx is no longer the greatest. I got a new nickname for him. He's a pharisee. Armstrong and Contador are both under suspision. But he seems to back Lance and always talks against Alberto.

 

[The Hitch]

Seeing as Grimandi only got 1 vote, id like the mods to change "Grimandi" for "Zombie-Coppi" based on the following post

I think it's interesting to try to figure out what the impact on this year's Giro would have been if Coppi had come back from the dead to ride it. Given that Zombies always seem to have super-human speed and strength, his climbing would have been phenomenal. But since Zombies also have poor motor skills, his descending would have been at about Basso's level, maybe even worse. Of course the strength of zombie-Coppi's team wouldn't have mattered, since he'd have just eaten them.

 

[on3m@n@rmy]

tut tut tut

The war broke out in 1939. 1942 is in fact known as the turning point. The Tours last race was 1939. The Giros 1940.

This strenghens your point though i guess.

LOL! Well, historian I'm not.

Thanks though. I can use all the help I can get!

 

[Greyhound Velo]

For me it's a coin toss between Hinault and Coppi, but I voted for the Badger because of his attitude. That and having the second best nickname in cycling ("The Cannibal" being the best of course ). Having said that, I got my company name (Greyhound Velo) from Coppi. Seeing him on the bike reminds me of one at full speed, and although I'm not sure if "The Greyhound" was actually his nickname it seems to fit pretty well.

 

[ultimobici]

Seeing as Grimandi only got 1 vote

One thing that struck me as I looked up the palmares of the main contenders was that Gimondi was unfortunate that his career directly matched Merckx. They both turned professional in 1965 and retired in 1978. One has to wonder what could have been had he not encountered Eddy the Juggernaut.

 

[Echoes]

Coppi was already stronger than Bartali during the war. Don't forget that they still raced until 1943 when Coppi was in Tunisia.

In the Tour of Emily 1941, Coppi had a huge gap over Bartali (don't remember the time, round a quarter of an hour I think), who was very angry because he was still his team mate and there was a contract between them.

In 1942 Coppi broke the Hour Record.


I have a problem with Bartali's palmares. OK I know about all he did during the war and that he is a great man but as a cyclist he mostly won in Italy except Tour de France and some Swiss races. And the Italian races had a rather depleted field. They were raced between Italians just like in Binda's time.

Coppi won many more races outside Italy. He even went to Belgium to challenge the Flandrians in the Omloop Ghent-Ghent (Het Volk), which he should have won but was downgraded to 2nd place because of an illegal bike change.

Yet I would say Coppi still had a great around him, which helped.


I voted for De Vlaeminck because of an incredible amount of races won (in Italy in particular), ecclectic (road, cross, track), won 4 Paris-Roubaix when Paris-Roubaix had its present-day route ("the last folly of the cycling sport"), could race ITT, could climb and raced in the greatest era in cycling history and one of the greatest cross riders in history.

But it's subjective.

 

[yetanothergreenworld]

For me it's a coin toss between Hinault and Coppi, but I voted for the Badger because of his attitude. That and having the second best nickname in cycling ("The Cannibal" being the best of course ). Having said that, I got my company name (Greyhound Velo) from Coppi. Seeing him on the bike reminds me of one at full speed, and although I'm not sure if "The Greyhound" was actually his nickname it seems to fit pretty well.

"The Greyhound" . . . good call!

 

[EvansIsTheBest]

No Freddy Maertens
Anyway voted for Anquetil being French, but Hinault really deserve it (won all major races in the calendar, classics and stage races alike) for his Paris-Roubaix 1981. Pure Class.

 

[on3m@n@rmy]

tut tut tut

The war broke out in 1939. 1942 is in fact known as the turning point. The Tours last race was 1939. The Giros 1940.

This strenghens your point though i guess.

Been thinking a little more on the history thing. One thing I found out is the Tour and ALMOST all the 5 monuments of racing (MSR, RVV, PR, LBL, Lombardy) were cancelled for part of WWII. For example,
MSR - not held in 1944 & 1945
PR - not held in 1940, 1941, & 1942
LBL - not held in 1940, 1941, 1942, & 1944
Lombardy - not held in 1943 & 1944
Tour - out of commission 1940 through 1946
{from: The Spring Classics}
BUT RVV was not cancelled during any of those years. While that's cool, I'm just curious why they were able to run the Tour of Flanders. It's obvious why not the others, but I would have also expected to see RVV not run some of those years too. Anyone know?

(p.s. - didn't think this deserved a separate thread, but mods move if you think so)

 

[laziali]

indurain, armstrong and contador should be excluded (rightly or wrongly) for racing in an era when the advantage of blood vector drugs completely warped performance.

WTF??? Because there was no doping in other eras??? There was a level playing field in all eras, buddy. amphet v amphet; Pot Belge v Pot Belge; EPO v EPO; transfusions v transfusions etc.

Would an EPO-fuelled Hinault beat an amphet fuelled Indurain - well, yeah!!! Would an EPO-fuelled Indurain beat an amphet fuelled Hinault - guess what, yeah again! Are you getting how this works yet?? FFS

 

[c&cfan]

sorry. this thread is just stupid as it gets.

like it or not, until let's say, an amateur guy beat everybody for the last time in a GT stage, killing them all in an mountain finish, this sport was for hard men. however they were amateurs and that result proves it.

in merckx era, the best rider was just the best at everything, today it is impossible. a guy like merckx\hinault would simply end a season with 0 top wins. they would be beaten in the cobles, gt, sprints, tt etc.

and for me it is just funny how if someone wins something big today, he obviously is a doper because be beat some dopers. however you admire merckx, in a time when anquetil said that they were using some drugs etc. considering that only few of them had the money for something really big, for me merckx was the cyclist that had the best "help" from doping.

today you cant say "who was the best". today you can say "who was the best at TT? OR GT? OR sprints? OR classics? etc.

 

[Suedehead]

BUT RVV was not cancelled during any of those years. While that's cool, I'm just curious why they were able to run the Tour of Flanders. It's obvious why not the others, but I would have also expected to see RVV not run some of those years too. Anyone know?

(p.s. - didn't think this deserved a separate thread, but mods move if you think so)[/QUOTE]

Off topic, sorry for that: There wasn't any fighting in flanders to interupt the RVV and the germans thought it a good idea to let life go on as normal as possible. Maybe a kind of "opium for the people" thing.

 

[jens_attacks]

BUT RVV was not cancelled during any of those years. While that's cool, I'm just curious why they were able to run the Tour of Flanders. It's obvious why not the others, but I would have also expected to see RVV not run some of those years too. Anyone know?

(p.s. - didn't think this deserved a separate thread, but mods move if you think so)

it seems that in those years,ronde van vlaanderen was a nazi supported race.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronde_van_Vlaanderen

wiki is your friend.read claims of collaboration.

 

[on3m@n@rmy]

The February 2011 Cycle Sport mag did their own assessment of who the greatest of all time is. They based their rankings on total wins in major stage races and one-day races open to the pros. Crits, kermesses, and exhbitions did not count. One poster in this thread, and I don't recall who, named Van Looy. Well, nice job by that poster.

Here's the CS results of the top 51 (odd # 51 because of serveral ties in win totals)... sorry about the spaces that this editor mysteriously inserted, like for W. Planckaert:

CYCLE SPORT TOP 51
Name...........Total Wins............Name.........Total Wins
Merckx...................333...............Boonen...............96
Van Looy...............301...............Verbeeck.............88
Van Steenbergen...270...............Planckaert, E......84
De Vlaeminck........248...............Agostinho............80
Maertens...............214...............Indurain...............75
Kelly.......................181...............Raas...................75
Cipollini.................165...............Armstrong............74
Zabel.....................155...............Planckaert, W.....74
Poblet....................153...............Sercu..................73
Moser....................151...............Gimondi..............71
Petacchi................147...............Svorada..............71
Saronni..................145...............Anderson............70
Hinault...................144...............Van Poppel.........70
Kirsipuu.................135...............Steels..................70
Van Springel.........132...............Bontempi.............69
Godefroot..............130...............Freire...................69
Anquetil.................129...............Kubler..................68
Jalabert.................127...............Ocana..................67
Darrigade..............126...............Nijdam.................67
Vanderaerden.......121...............Altig.....................66
McEwen................109...............Zulle....................66
Zoetemelk.............106...............Poulidor...............64
Rominger..............103...............Museeuw.............63
Bitossi...................102...............Lasa.....................62
Bartali...................100...............Cavendish............62
Coppi......................98

As you'd expect, there are a lot of sprinters in this list. It made me wonder who the sprinters displaced. So I put together different lists of the top winners and placers in the 5 monuments. I did this because I thought some other pretty good racers would appear that would not be in the CS list. These are shown below; one just for wins, the other placings (1st, 2nd, & 3rd place). Source material was a book called "The Spring Classics: Cycling's Greatest One-Day Races" by by Philippe Bouvet & Phillipe Brunel:
The Spring Classics
Some of the guys who stood out are shown in blue font. As you can see some of the more familiar guys were (or are is with Canc) pretty good. A couple others like Binda and Girardengo were from the early 1900's. Anyway, I put this here for your enjoyment. I also have the monuments won and placed along with the years for each of the racers in the list if anyone is interested.

..........................................MONUMENT.PLACING
MONUMENT.WINS..............(1st,.2nd,.or.3rd)
Name................Total........Name................Total
Merckx.................19..........Merckx.................30
De Vlaeminck......11..........De Vlaeminck.......21
Coppi.....................9..........Coppi....................15
Girardengo............9..........Girardengo...........15
Kelly.......................9.........Kelly.....................15
Van Looy...............8..........Moser...................15
Bartali....................7..........Museeuw..............15
Argentin.................6..........Bartali...................13
Binda......................6.........Van Looy..............13
De Bruyne..............6..........Belloni..................11
Moser.....................6..........Godefroot.............11
Museeuw................6.........Binda....................10
Pelissier, H.............6..........Boonen................10
Bartoli.....................5..........Gimondi...............10
Belloni....................5..........Argentin.................9
Bettini.....................5..........De Bruyne.............9
Boonen...................5..........Raas......................9
Hinault....................5..........Van Steenbergen...9
Van Steenbergen...5..........Ganna....................8
Bobet, L..................4..........Garin......................8
Cancellara..............4..........Magni.....................8
Gimondi..................4..........Pelissier, H............8
Godefroot...............4..........Schotte...................8
Kuiper....................4...........Verbeeck...............8
Rebry.....................4..........Bartoli.....................7
Schepers...............4...........Boogerd.................7
Zabel.....................4...........Brunero..................7
Brunero.................3...........Hinault....................7
Butsse...................3...........Kuiper.....................7
Cunego.................3...........Poblet.....................7
Daems..................3...........Tchmil.....................7
De Roo..................3..........Trousselier..............7
De Wolf.................3..........Van Springel...........7
Derijcke.................3...........Zabel......................7
Freire....................3...........Ballerini...................6
Gijssels.................3...........Bettini.....................6
Houa.....................3...........Bini.........................6
Lapize...................3...........Bitossi.....................6
Leman...................3...........Bobet, L..................6
Magni....................3...........Impanis...................6
Planckaert, E........3...........Leman.....................6
Raas.....................3...........Piemontesi..............6
Simpson, T...........3...........Rebellin...................6
Tafi.......................3...........Rebry.......................6
Tchmil...................3...........Ronsse....................6
Van Petegem........3..........Schepers..................6
Vermandel............3..........Van.Daele.................6
Altig.......................2.........Van der Poel.............6
Aucouturier...........2..........Van Hauwaert...........6
.........................................Van Petegem............6
.........................................Vanderaerden...........6

 

[runninboy]

When you think Coppi lost some good years to WW2 He gets my vote.

 

[on3m@n@rmy]

When you think Coppi lost some good years to WW2 He gets my vote.

Or Bartali, who lost more of his prime years to WWII

 

[Buffalo Soldier]

Nice list you made, onemanarmy!

 

[Hotbrakes]

Giuseppe Zorzi, enough said!