Van Aert, Van der Poel and Pogacar outperform Merckx in Monument consistency

Cycling often looks back to its golden past, but Van der Poel, Pogacar and Van Aert are putting up numbers that go beyond it. If they line up in a Monument, you can almost set your watch to them being featured at the front of the race. And that in a time when the sport is more competitive than ever.

Let’s start with the man who made the impossible possible on the road to San Remo. Go down, get back up, and leave everyone watching in disbelief: Tadej Pogačar.

He finished in the top 10 in 18 out of 21 Monuments. The three rare occasions on which he did not make the top 10 all came early in his career. In 2019, he placed 18th in Liège–Bastogne–Liège, and in 2020 he finished 12th on his debut in Milan–San Remo. The third instance was a DNF in the 2023 edition of Liège–Bastogne–Liège, when he crashed heavily, broke his wrist, and was forced to abandon the race.

Of the 18 times he finished in the top 10, the Slovenian stood on the podium no fewer than 15 times (71%), claiming 11 victories. That translates to an incredible win rate of just over 50% in Monuments.

Looking at top 10 finishes in Monuments, Pogačar still has to give way to Van der Poel. In 22 appearances, he has missed the top 10 only once, in the 2020 edition of Milan San Remo, where he finished 13th in the race won by his long time rival Wout van Aert.

The Dutchmen has finished on the podium 14 times, 64 percent of his Monument starts, and has taken seven victories in Monuments.

Wout van Aert is third in this Monument consistency ranking. Although the 31-year-old Belgian has not been able to convert his promising early career into multiple Monument victories beyond his win at Milan–San Remo in 2020, the Team Visma | Lease a Bike rider can still point to an impressive record of consistency.

Van Aert has finished in the top 10 on 16 occasions from 19 Monument appearances (83%), reaching the podium seven times.

With these performances, all three riders rank ahead of Eddy Merckx on this metric. The Belgian great recorded 44 top 10 finishes from 53 Monument starts, an 83 percent rate that long stood as the benchmark. Of those results, 27 were podium finishes, and he still holds the record with 19 Monument victories.

And also with a podium rate of 51%, he trails well behind Mathieu van der Poel (64%) and Tadej Pogačar (71%).

A striking statistic, especially given how competitive the peloton has become. It makes the consistency of Van Aert, Van der Poel and Pogačar all the more impressive.