That is a lot of revisionist history for one post.
First, Boonen was NEVER a pure sprinter. He was very much a rider like Sagan, a classics ride who could hold his own in, and occasionally win, a bunch gallop.
Saying Boonen just has “more wins” in Flanders and Roubaix is incredibly understated. He is tied for the most victories ever in both races.
Oh, and one of the guys he is tied with fir the most Flanders wins? Cancellera.
You also skipped over Cancellera’s TT world titles.
You must be from Belgium!
I’m quite enjoying this debate 
I have no horse in the race. It’s interesting to see how differently people rank all time results. The monument wins are obviously spectacular. Personally, I put a fair bit less emphasis on Tour stage wins and green jerseys. However, that is just a random personal opinion. Not based on any kind of high tech metric.
The points based metrics has Sagan and his strange tattoo ranked pretty high. I imagine he has some more winning left in him too.
https://www.procyclingstats.com/rankings/me/all-time
Of modern riders, Valverde would have to be the leader, would he not?
Digging into it, they all pale in comparison to Merckx, he’s so far ahead, it’s almost unbelievable what he achieved in a single lifetime.
If we talking greatest riders of all time: Marianna Vos
Just over 230 road Victories, including 3 world championships, Olympic gold + Olympic gold on the track + 7(!) World championships in cyclocross. Totaling more than 400 victories in professional racing across 3 disciplines. Yesterday she also won a Giro donne stage (The only ¨grand tour¨ for women) for the 30th time, which is even more impressive considering it only has 10 stages and not 21. If there were more races on the calendar, she probably would have won even more.
Truly outstanding.
Agreed.
There is an argument, that on strength of competition and size of field, it is not an equal comparison. I’m not arguing for it, just mentioning what many say when this gender comparison is discussed.
You’d also have to add in PFP ( Pauline Ferrand-Prévot ), 3 discipline World Champion. No man has done that…
However, MVDP could, this year actually.
What’s cross discipline worth as a metric? Imagine if Pro Cycling Stats counted MVDPs Cyclocross wins. He’d be in the hundreds of wins already…
Complex this equation is.
Can Cav win with no skinsuit?
Wasting watts!
Vos is an amazing cyclist. Longo, Burton and some of the USA ladies as well (Thompson, Twigg, Carpenter).
KFC in cross and I’m not going to try and put mountain biking in context without checking notes.
The ladies are even more impressive for navigating the shark pit of pro racing “management”, low pay and generally lower opportunities.
Tours on. See ya in a few hours….
So far looking good for a bunch sprint. Only a tiny breakaway. Next hurdle will be the last 20 km, to prevent attacks. I’m sure Alaphilip and the rest of the ‘wolves’ will ride their guts out, to give Cav the chance to equal the record.
For some reason I feel like Cav doesn’t have it today…
But I’m often wrong about these things 
Merlier’s comments about being popped out of the gruppetto are worth a read.
Anyone who has raced at any level completely understands that moment of dread when you know the day is over. The elastic breaks and it’s bye-bye peloton (*)
Bit different when it’s the biggest race in the world, you are paid to ride, and have won a stage. But the cool thing about cycling is we can relate to the joy and the pain.
(*) As a small guy and pretty good wheel sucker, I’ve not gotten dropped too often. When I do get popped it’s usually a 35+ race where some big boys show up and torture the field. But man, that feeling of dread when you know you are going off the back is just awful.
Ok the commentators just talked about this… apparently this is out of 70something stages total… and if you only take the road stages, she won almost 40% of all road stages she started at that race 
The 3k/4k rule is stupid because it only comes into effect IF there is a crash. So guys like Pog still have to ride in the top 10 just in case. He can’t just sit up at 4k and cruise in.
I mean he has to finish in the same group as his rivals. I feel like it’s to some extend also up to the teams to police themselves. If they all let the sprinter teams do there thing, they don’t have to be up there. Also, the jury tends to be quite generous what counts as Peloton on the sprint stages. There really need to be big gaps between groups to restart the clock.
Totally right
I have been advocating for probably over a decade that the GC times need to be taken at the 3K banner (or whatever distance you want) if you want to make it safer. Then the GC guys (and their teams) can get the hell out of the way.
The fact that the UCI still can’t recognize this basic reality indicates how fooked up that organization really is.
What happened with that crash? I left my office to get some coffee and came back to see De Clerq bleeding and a bunch of guys chasing…
someone slid out on the right side of the road, went down, and then took out the bunch, which sent a bunch of people down the side of a long embankment
It was a stupid unforced error, probably due to fatigue
