That man is Belgium's Eddy Merckx.
Nicknamed "The Cannibal" for his insatiable appetite for victory and competition, he carved out a career that will likely never be seriously challenged.
At the age of 19 in 1964, he won the world amateur road title.
In 1967, he won the first of three world professional world titles. Armstrong has achieved the feat once, in 1993.
In 1969, Merckx contested his first Tour de France where he recorded the greatest feat in the sport's history by winning the yellow jersey, the King of the Mountains jersey, the green jersey and all three time trials.
Nowadays, no rider ever wins both the green and mountains jersey in the same Tour.
It is a record which will likely never be matched.
In other years, Merckx achieved the following:
1968 - Won Tour of Italy (also won King of Mountains jersey & green jersey)
1969 - Won Tour de France (also won King of mountains jersey & green jersey)
1970 - Won Tour de France (also won King of Mountains jersey & eight stage wins)
1971 - Won Tour de France (also won green jersey) & world road championship
1972 - Won Tour de France (also won green jersey) & Tour of Italy
1973 - Didn't compete in Tour de France but won Tour of Italy (also won points jersey) & Tour of Spain
1974 - Won Tour de France, Tour of Italy & world road championship
1975 - Finished second in the Tour de France & broke the world hour record
In his career, he won the Tour de France five times (won 35 stages), the Tour of Italy five times (including 25 stage wins) and the Tour of Spain once.
No other rider can boast such an array of victories in the big three Tours.
Aside from winning the Tour de France yellow jersey five times, Merckx also won the King of the Mountains three times and the green jersey three times. Armstrong has never won either the polka dot (mountain) or green jersey (points).
In 1971, Merckx won 54 of the 120 professional races he entered. At his peak, between 1969 and 1973, he won 250 of the 650 races he contested. During his professional career, he won 445 of the 1,582 races he entered (28% of all his races ended in victorie).
Nowadays, a cyclist like Armstrong rarely competes outside the Tour de France as he makes it his sole focus of the year.
Merckx used to race most of the year and often in most years, he contested both the Tours of France & Italy, as well as each of the one-day classics and many of the minor multi-stage events.
Merckx's dominance of other major races included:
Tour of Lombardy - won twice
Paris-Nice - won three times
Milan-San Remo - won seven times
Paris Roubaix - won three times
Liege-Bastogne-Liege - won five times
Amstel Gold - won twice
Tour of Flanders - won twice
Het Volk - won twice
Ghent-Wevelgem - won four times
Fleche-Wallonne - won four times
Tour of Switzerland - won once
Paris-Brussels - won once
Put simply, he was, and remains, a freak!
No cyclist has ever approached his record. It is a reasonable bet that nobody ever will.
Whilst Armstrong should be lauded for his achievement in winning a record seven Tours de France, when it comes to the question of who is the greatest cyclist, Merckx wins hands down.
For mine, Merckx may well be the greatest living athlete, across any sport.
But when it comes to cycling there was no match for this man.
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Best Athlete of all time
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