Tadej Pogacar vs Eddy Merckx - The battle for 'best of all times' in numbers

You can’t compare eras directly. Eddy Merckx raced in a calendar built on volume. Tadej Pogačar races in one built on control, targeted peaks, fewer days. The sport is different, but the comparison keeps resurfacing whenever Pogačar wins again.

So if you strip the debate back to numbers, what do they actually say?

Pogačar has so far taken 108 professional wins across 396 race days. That gives him a win ratio of 27.3%, which comes down to one victory every 3.7 race days. 

His consistency is just as striking: he has finished in the top three 165 times, meaning he makes the podium on 41.7% of the days he races. He has also recorded 247 top ten finishes, so he ends a race day inside the top ten 62.4% of the time.

Merckx, across his career, recorded 279 wins in 879 race days. His win ratio sits even higher at 31.7%, or one win every 3.15 race days. The gap widens further when you look at placement frequency. 

Across those same race days, The Cannibal finished in the top three 492 times, meaning a podium on 56.0% of his starts. He also placed inside the top ten on 779 occasions, translating to a top ten finish on 88.6% of the days he raced.

Merckx’s early career numbers make that contrast even sharper. Up to and including his 1972 season, the year he turned 27, he logged 479 race days and won 186 times, a win ratio of 38.8% or one victory every 2.6 race days. 

In that same period, he recorded 287 podiums and 429 top ten finishes, meaning he finished in the top three on 59.9% of his race days and inside the top ten on 89.6% of them.

The big question, of course, is whether Pogačar can still catch The Cannibal in total victories? The answer is very probably 'no'.

Even though Pogačar’s win rate is not that far off Merckx’s (27.3% versus 31.7%), the real difference is volume, specifically race days. So far, Pogačar averages 44 race days per season across nine seasons, a figure slightly dragged down by just five race days in 2017 and 14 in 2018.

Merckx raced in a different era, one in which altitude blocks and long training camps did not dictate the rhythm of the season as they do nowadays. The calendar was built around racing, and he raced constantly. That is how Merckx ends up at 58.6 race days per season across his career, even with unusually low totals in 1964 (2 race days), 1965 (13) and his final year, 1978 (1).

Based on his last two seasons, 25 wins in 2024 and 20 in 2025, he would still need roughly seven to eight more seasons of the same level of dominance to close the gap in total victories. 

And in an era where performance keeps accelerating, and new stars arrive on the biggest stages at ever younger ages, it is far from certain that Pogačar will still be able to match the next generation deep into his thirties.

It also raises a more basic question: how long does he actually want to stay in the peloton? During the last Tour de France, there were already signals around motivation, and since then, he has more than once hinted that he does not see himself racing until very late, although he also rejected those comments.

If the overall wins category is about volume and consistency, Grand Tours are where legacies get fixed in place. Merckx built his reputation as an all-terrain winner, but his Grand Tour record is still the backbone of the comparison. He finished with 11 overall victories: five Tours de France, five Giros d’Italia and one Vuelta a España.

Pogačar currently has five: four Tours and one Giro. On career totals, that leaves him six Grand Tour wins short of Merckx.

Age adds a bit of extra perspective. By 27, Merckx had seven Grand Tour victories, while Pogačar has five. The key context is the number of attempts. Up to and including the 1972 season, Merckx had started nine Grand Tours in total: four Tours de France and five Giros d’Italia. 

Pogačar has taken his five Grand Tour wins from eight starts: six Tours de France, one Giro d’Italia and one Vuelta a España.

In other words, both operated at an exceptional strike rate at this stage of their careers. Merckx converted 77.8% of his Grand Tour starts into an overall victory, while Pogačar sits at 62.5%. 

The difference is that in Merckx’s era, it was simply more normal to race Grand Tours more frequently and to build a palmares through volume as well as dominance.

If Pogačar wants to close the six Grand Tour wins gap to Merckx, it almost feels like a prerequisite that he starts racing more than one Grand Tour a year, something he’s only done once so far, in 2024, partly because of his love for and focus on the Spring Classics.

The unique quality of both riders lies in their versatility: winning Grand Tours while also shaping and dominating the biggest one-day classics.

When it comes to the Monuments, Merckx finished his career with 19 wins, while Pogačar currently sits on 10, a gap of nine on the full career count. On paper, that looks manageable, especially given Pogačar’s recent output. Over the last three seasons, he has taken seven Monuments: three Il Lombardia, two Liège Bastogne Liège and two Tour of Flanders.

At age 27, the gap is relatively small. Merckx had already reached twelve Monument victories, compared to Pogačar’s ten.

The bigger difference is the checklist. By that stage, Merckx had already won all five Monuments. Pogačar still has two boxes to tick: Milano Sanremo and Paris Roubaix.

With that in mind, Pogačar has reportedly marked both races as key goals for 2026. If he does, the main obstacle is obvious. In both cases, Mathieu van der Poel is likely to be the rider to beat.

The final part of the comparison is the road World Championships. After his back-to-back victories in Zürich and Kigali, Pogačar sits on two titles, one fewer than Merckx, who won the Worlds three times during his career in 1967, 1971 and 1974.

At the age of 27, the two are level: both had two rainbow jerseys by that point. With Montréal and Haute-Savoie on the horizon in 2026 and 2027, Pogačar will have realistic opportunities to draw level with Merckx’s career total, or even move beyond it.

So, where does this leave the discussion? Not at a clear verdict, but at a more abstract question.

If you correct for race days and look at win rates rather than totals, Pogačar is close to Merckx in a way that would have seemed unthinkable not long ago. The same applies when you compare them at 27 years old. Across Grand Tours, Monuments and World Championships, the gaps at that age are small.

That is where the comparison becomes less about numbers and more about context. Merckx raced in a peloton that was smaller, less specialised and far less global. Pogačar operates in a landscape where preparation is optimised, teams are deeper, and rivals arrive at the highest level earlier and in greater numbers. 

Dominance today looks simply different.

The harder question, then, is not whether Pogačar is close to Merckx on paper. It is how to weigh performance across eras when the competitive density of the peloton has changed so fundamentally.