French expert compares Tadej Pogacar's Giro d'Italia reigning to Eddy Merckx era: "50 years later and there is another cannibal"

Tadej Pogacar's reigning at Giro d'Italia was by no means unexpected, but it has still drawn a lot of criticism. And naturally, people also begin to compare the Slovenian to the (arguably) best cyclist of history - Eddy Merckx. One such is Cyclism'Actu's writer, Tour de Finistere director, Marc Fayet in his blog.

"When the great Eddy Merckx won everything in his time, because he could not do otherwise, because he was a leg above the others, because he was an exceptional being among all exceptional beings, he had only one argument to justify such voracity. 'It’s so that Mom doesn’t worry about me,' he said. These may not be exactly what he said, but I remember it being something close to it," Fayet recalls a story about the Belgian.

"Here we are more than 50 years later and another cannibal has placed his paw on cycling. world to be the undisputed champion, with the same appetite, the same total domination," he lists just few similarities between the two.

"The first elements that distinguish them are the smile of one, the marble face of the other, the taste for play of one and the work of the other, the humor of one, the seriousness of the other, the apparent lightness of one, the earthy density of the other."

"If Eddy Merckx attracted so much criticism in his time, it was because he left crumbs for others. Today Tadej Pogacar doesn't leave much either and ultimately we like that. It's true that we find a certain taste of the past, a sort of nostalgia in search of old traditional recipes."