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He was the icon of Belgian cycling before the advent of Eddy Merckx, of whom he was later a rival to the point of leaving Faema when this team hired the “Cannibal” who would later win everything. But Rik Van Looy, who died last night at the age of 90, was no exception, even if due to his size he could never have won a grand tour. But he was the first to win all five classic cycling “monuments”: Milan-Sanremo, Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix (3 times), Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Tour of Lombardy. The total number of successes in these races was eight, which becomes eleven if we add the three victories in Ghent-Wevelgem.
But those who loved this champion, who was also a master of cycling, founding an academy for young riders in his homeland, even maintain that in road racing Van Looy was superior to Merckx, that Paris-Tours has never won, unlike the other. And then Van Looy still remains the only one who managed to win all 8 original classics (in addition to the 5 original classics, also Fleche Wallone, Paris-Brussels and Paris-Tours).
In a professional career that lasted about twenty years, during which he competed not only with Merckx, but also with rivals of the caliber of Fausto Coppi, Rik Van Steenbergen, Ferdi Kubler, Hugo Koblet, Louison Bobet, Jacques Anquetil and Charly Gaul , Van Looy achieved a total of 371 victories, including 37 stages in the Grand Tours, of which 18 in the Vuelta, 12 in the Giro and 7 at the Tour. These figures make him the second most successful cyclist in history, after Merckx.
But Van Looy, emperor also on the track, where he triumphed in twelve Six Days, remains in the history of cycling also for having won two world titles in the road race, in 1960 and 1961. He could have achieved the hat trick in 1963 on home soil, in Renaix, but in the general sprint that concluded that world championship race he was beaten by one of his followers, the other Belgian Benoni Beheyt, who was later renamed by his compatriots “The Traitor” and to whom Van Looy did not speak a word for years. Even in this forerunner of Merckx, who in 1968 did not forgive his Faema teammate, Emilio Casalini, for beating him in a stage of the Giro.
