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Who is the best Tour rider of all time?
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Best Tour rider ever?
The question has swirled in the past, but it has never been debated quite as vociferously by cycling partisans as it is during Grand Tour season: just who is the best Tour de France racer of all time?
Eddy Merckx is widely regarded as the best pro cyclist in history, and until Lance Armstrong won a record seventh, Eddy was likewise regarded by most cycling aficionados as the best Tour racer as well. After all, he did win the Tour 5 times, including 4 in a row. He also finished second and 6th in the only other Tours he started. To those results add 3 green jerseys (best sprinter), two polka dot (best climber) and 34 stage victories, and it’s not hard to see why, before Lance, Eddy was considered the ultimate Tour rider. The other 5-time winners who came before Lance, Jacques Anquetil, Bernard Hinault, and Miguel Indurain, simply do not have results as compelling as Merckx’s.
Anquetil won the Tour 5 times, finished third once, never won the green or polka dot jersey and won 16 stages in 8 starts. Hinault came close to matching King Eddy, with 5 wins, two seconds, one green jersey, one polka dot jersey and 28 total stage wins in 8 starts. Indurain, although he was the first rider to ever win 5 in a row, started 7 other times without a podium finish. He never won the green or polka dot jersey, and he comes in last (among the 5+ winner’s club) in total stage victories with 12. By comparison, Lance has started the tour 11 times, finishing first 7 times, with no other podium places, no green or polka dot jerseys and 24 stage wins.
Summary statistics are not enough to settle the question, but by applying a more rigorous statistical approach we can answer the lingering question: Is Eddy STILL the best Tour rider ever, or does Lance’s seventhth victory move him into that spot?
There are many ways to analyze the data to try to produce a quantifiable, or at least supportable, result. Many magazines, web sites and bike racing fanatics have developed ranking systems based on points awarded for results attained. One simple system might award 6 points for every win, 4 points for every second place, 3 points for every third, 2 points for fourth, 1 point for fifth and 3 points for every green and polka dot jersey won. Such a system would rank the top 10 riders of all time like this:
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Green | Polka | Total | ||
| 1 | Merckx | 5 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 49 | |||
| 2 | Hinault | 5 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 44 | |||
| 3 | Armstrong | 7 | 42 | ||||||
| 4 | Van Impe | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 6 | 42 | |
| 5 | Zoetemelk | 1 | 6 | 3 | 1 | 37 | |||
| 6 | Anquetil | 5 | 1 | 33 | |||||
| 7 | Bahamontes | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 33 | ||
| 8 | Ullrich | 1 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 31 | |||
| 9 | Indurain | 5 | 30 | ||||||
| 10 | Virenque | 1 | 1 | 1 | 7 | 29 |
There are a few surprises here! Van Impe and Zoetemelk, who each won the Tour only once, are rated above Anquetil and Indurain and riders with three wins, like Greg LeMond and Louison Bobet don’t show up at all. Even weirder, Richard Virenque, who never won at all, shows up 9th by virtue of his record 7 polka dot jerseys. Maybe our system needs a little tweaking. Let’s raise the value for winning to 12, for second to 7 and for third to 4. Leaving 4th and 5th at 2 and 1 points respectively, we need to decide how much we should award to the green and polka dot jersey winners. We could reward them the same as for a third place finish, arguing that, since they appear on the podium at the end of the race, green and polka dot jersey winners should garner points commensurate with the lowest of the GC riders (who also get a place on the podium). With this point system in place, we have a more intuitive top 10 as follows:
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Green | Polka | Total | ||
| 1 | Merckx | 5 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 87 | |||
| 2 | Armstrong | 7 | 84 | ||||||
| 3 | Hinault | 5 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 82 | |||
| 4 | Anquetil | 5 | 1 | 64 | |||||
| 5 | Zoetemelk | 1 | 6 | 3 | 1 | 61 | |||
| 6 | Indurain | 5 | 60 | ||||||
| 7 | Van Impe | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 6 | 60 | |
| 8 | Ullrich | 1 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 53 | |||
| 9 | Bahamontes | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 49 | ||
| 10 | LeMond | 3 | 1 | 1 | 47 |
We’ve managed to shed Virenque and pull LeMond into the mix, and it seems like a more justifiable ranking, but can we feel comfortable that this somewhat arbitrary point matrix really values each level of performance correctly? Is a second, a third and a fourth (13 points) really more valuable than a win (12 points)? And what about stage wins? We haven’t accounted for them in the previous two systems at all.
Next time we'll look at some more creative ways to determine the best Tour rider of all time.
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