“Maybe Roger’s just getting a bit old — let’s put it that way": De Vlaeminck's former rival slams 'absurd' criticism of Tadej Pogacar

Roger De Vlaeminck’s latest verbal grenade — claiming Tadej Pogacar “isn’t fit to lace Eddy Merckx’s shoes” and that he “wouldn’t drop me if I were still in the peloton” — has caused ripples well beyond Belgium. Now one of his former rivals, Riccardo Magrini, has joined the debate, accusing the four-time Paris–Roubaix winner of living in the past and “missing the point entirely.”

Speaking to QuiBiciSport, Magrini, who raced alongside De Vlaeminck in the late 1970s before going on to a successful career as a directeur sportif and now Eurosport commentator, said he found the remarks “completely out of place.”

“I’ve always had great respect for Roger as a rider, and we also had a good personal relationship,” Magrini said. “But his comments about Pogacar seem completely out of place to me. It’s absurd to compare different eras. Too much has changed — the gearing, the training, the nutrition. Merckx was Merckx, Hinault was Hinault, Pogacar is Pogacar. Full stop.”

Magrini’s words carry a mixture of affection and exasperation. He acknowledges De Vlaeminck’s greatness but suggests the outburst reflects an increasingly common generational mindset — one resistant to accepting that modern cycling can produce its own giants.

“Maybe Roger’s just getting a bit old — let’s put it that way. When you get older, you tend to focus only on what you did yourself,” he said. “Personally, I really enjoy modern cycling and I really enjoy watching Pogacar. I don’t understand those who say he has no rivals or that he makes races boring. Modern cycling is full of phenomenal riders.”

Indeed, Magrini points to the sport’s current “golden generation” — Pogacar, Van der Poel, Vingegaard, Evenepoel, Roglic and others — as evidence that cycling has evolved, not declined. “People forget how fast, tactical and physically demanding the modern sport is,” he added off-air in the same discussion. “The peloton is deeper than ever, and it’s not easy to dominate like Pogacar does.”

To Magrini, the entire debate over whether Pogacar could match Merckx — or whether De Vlaeminck himself could keep up with Pogacar — is fundamentally misguided.

“It’s like asking how Maradona or Sivori would perform in football today, against modern defences,” he argued. “Roger was a champion, and I’m sure he would have been one in any era, but it makes no sense to wonder whether he’d hold Pogacar’s wheel. I prefer to just enjoy today’s champions as I enjoyed those of the past.”

His comments reflect a growing divide in how cycling’s history is interpreted — between those, like De Vlaeminck, who view the 1970s as the sport’s golden age, and those like Magrini who see today’s evolution as proof that greatness adapts with time.

While De Vlaeminck’s bluntness remains a defining part of his legend, Magrini’s response underscores a different truth: that the sport he and Merckx helped shape half a century ago continues to produce riders whose brilliance deserves to stand on its own terms — not forever in comparison with the past.