A teammate's daughter gave Eddy Merckx his nickname, the Cannibal
When a teammate told his young daughter how Eddy Merckx refused to let anyone else win, she suggested a name for him: the Cannibal. It stuck, and the numbers justify it. Over eighteen years as a professional the Belgian won 525 races, including a record eleven Grand Tours.
Merckx was born on 17 June 1945 in Meensel-Kiezegem, Brabant, the first child of Jules Merckx and Jenny Pittomvils. The following year the family moved to Brussels to run a grocery shop. A hyperactive, competitive boy, he tried basketball, football, table tennis, tennis and boxing, winning some local bouts, but he claimed to have known at four that cycling was his calling; his earliest memory was falling off his bike. From age eight he rode to school every day, pretending with friends to be his idol Stan Ockers.
He took out a racing licence in 1961, placed sixth in his first race and won for the first time at Petit-Enghien on 1 October that year. In 1962 he rode 55 races and won 23, and after taking the Belgian amateur road title he turned down his headmaster's offer to postpone exams and left school. He became amateur world road champion at Sallanches in 1964, finished twelfth at the Tokyo Olympics, and turned professional on 29 April 1965 with 80 amateur victories behind him.
Success came quickly. Milan-San Remo in 1966 was his first major win, and his first Grand Tour, the Giro d'Italia, followed after his move to Faema. Between 1970 and 1974 he won two Grand Tours in the same season four times; the last of those years he added the world road title, becoming the first rider to take cycling's Triple Crown. In October 1972 he lengthened the hour record by nearly 800 metres. His haul includes five Tours de France, five Giros and a Vuelta, and he is the only rider to win each of the five Monuments at least twice.
Retiring on 18 May 1978, he stayed in the sport, founding Eddy Merckx Cycles in 1980, coaching Belgium's national team until 1996 and helping run the Tour of Qatar from 2002 to 2016.
Source: Eddy Merckx
