"There's probably not been a cyclist since Merckx who has had such a long and successful career" - Not in Pogacar, but Jens Voigt does sees Merckx's heir in modern cycling

He may be known as “The goat” but I can’t realistically consider him a top ten candidate taking together all forms of cycling.

Vos had 28 UCI WC wins, Absalon 33, Schurter 34, MVDP 41 and counting. As far as world championships they are all ahead too
Longo, MVDP, PFP, Merckx, de Vlaeminck, TP and at least a half dozen others from long ago are surely higher up, or what criteria are you privileging other than a nickname?

Well, perhaps we still consider sport* to be more of a men’s thing? * I have to say that watching my partner at her badminton club that seems to be one of the rare sports where a more balanced attitude is ambivalent, perhaps because most prefer to play mixed doubles at that level and it’s a very social sport at club level and each match type has equal weighting towards a tournament total?

Hey, kudos to him but sorry, he’s also showing a complete lack of real sport awareness. He speaks of GOATS then tries to equate everything but at the same time ignoring whatever he’s not interested in. So basically he’s trying to promote cycling to the level of a megasports and demote every other sport to a lesser level by not mentioning anyone considered a GOAT in minor sports.
Showing a real interest in sport or GOATs should be a prerequisite to lumping together arbitrarily but, yes she is definitely a cycling GOAT and yet, I’d hesitate to place her above Jeannie Longo, I mean we’re talking 38 world records, 4 Olympic medals including one gold, 26 WC medals including 13 golds, 3 Tdff wins, twice 2nd, 23 stage wins plus countless others for a grand total of 1157 wins! And yet, she’s hardly EVER mentioned. As for other total dominators in sport, (An)Toni Bou, another complete unknown.