This thread.....
You have Pantani. Why bother putting in another GT centered rider? He won the magic double, so any 1 GT season is out by default, and as much as I like to fawn at Alberto Contador, Chris Horner really stopped Nibali from beating that only 5 years later.
Sprinter winning Worlds + classic +stages ain't good enough. Only possible sprinter in is Boonen 2005, and that's because of classics
Why Gilbert would be in is beyond me, it's effectively a season where he wins 1 monument, and one GT stage. Huge bunch of other races ofcourse, but I consider it worse than Cavendish in 2009.
And now I'm gonna barricade the door in case Pisti knows where I live
It's really between Boonen 2005, Sagan 2016 (similar classics seasons) and Pantani 1998. Classic greats winning multiple of the 7 biggest one day races in the world in a season is not unheard of, especially if they have a good sprint. If you add the worlds it becomes a bit more circumstantial, as it's pretty dependent on the worlds course.
The Giro-Tour double is widely considered impossible nowadays. Only once this decade has the best GT rider at the moment even tried it, and he got 1st and 5th, and he was the best GT rider by a huge margin at the time. The best climber of the world tried it this year. He got 2nd and 12th.
With all due respect to how great Boonen's and Sagan's seasons were, I'd take Pantani in a heartbeat any day, in any state.
Any other option is a mockery of the sport.
That's not considering the women's, which I think is a seperate debate entirely, and I only think it should be compared if competition is a lot more equal.