The Virtual Musette: A Road Cycling Blog

The Top Cyclists of the Modern Era is an ongoing project which attempts to uncover the greatest male professional cyclists from the late '30s through present day. The centerpiece of the entire series of articles is a scoring system which has been used to assign points.  These points then serve as the the basis to numerically rank the cyclists.

Summary of how the points are determined and cyclists are ranked 

1. Only riders from the Modern Era were included, 1938-present. 
2. Cyclists were assigned initial points based on victories in the important races on the calendar. Points were awarded to podium places, but only for the World Championship Road Race and Grand Tours.  A cyclist’s initial points serve as their “raw score.”
3. Adjustments to a cyclist’s initial points (raw score) were given based on Significant Lifetime Achievements, certain race records, and years lost to injury, war, and illness.
4. Raw scores and adjustments were added together for the final total assigned points, and cyclists were then issued a numerical rank. In the event of a tie in total points, the rider with the higher raw score was ranked higher. In the event of both a tie in points and raw score, the cyclist with the higher number of total career road victories was ranked highest. 

Below are are the links to the all the articles, in their correct order of publication. Please note, one of the constraints of a blogging platform is that archived series of articles always appear in the reverse order in which they were originally published.   For example, in the four part series Background:  Comparing Cycling's Great Eras, you will first have to click on the link below and then scoll toward the bottom of the page to get to Part 1, as part 4 will appear at the top of the page. 

1.  Introduction

2.  Background:  Comparing Cycling's Great Eras (Parts 1-4)

3.  Background:  The Missing Years - War, Injury, and Illness (Parts 1-3)

4.  Scoring: Part 1- Which races are included in the system and how many points are they worth?

5.  Scoring: Part 2 - Added points from significant Lifetime Milestone Adjustments, certain race records, and years lost to war, injury, or illness. 

6.  The Top 25 Cyclists of  the Modern Era with photos, point totals, and nicknames 

7.  The list expanded to The Top 50 Cyclists + commentary (through mid season, July 2010)

8.  The list expanded to The Top 100 Cyclists + commentary (from end of season, October 2010 - present)

I've also included the links as they were originally categorized on this site below.  Since these don't appear in the order in which they were published, I'd stick with viewing everything in the order listed above.