Originally Posted by
T-Mar
Eddy participated in seven Tour de France. Cavendish must be up around a dozen Tour de France. So, on a percentile basis Eddy is still #1.
It's like those people who state that Lewis Hamilton is the greatest Formula 1 driver ever, based on all his records. Sure, he's got more poles and wins than anybody else, but when you look at those numbers based on a percentage of the number of races entered, he falls to 5th and 3rd respectively.
As has been mentioned already, it is apples and oranges. At least in cycling the development of the gear has not overshadowed the athlete. It is still mostly down to their own performance. We can talk about riders being well rounded vs specialists. Put a current rider on any current bike in the field and they will likely perform just as well.
In something like F1 the gear has become the main factor. Russel a current back marker basically had a victory the first time competing in Hamilton’s car. Team mistake took that away unfortunately. Interesting from an engineering point of view but it really take a bit of the “greatest of all time” away from Hamilton purely as a driver.