Quote Originally Posted by Graham Breeze View Post
Well in cycling proper riders win Grand Tours or the Classics but there is also the World Championship for those who can only sprint for a few hundred metres and bother to turn up on the day.
Whilst it wasn't me that brought cycling into this discussion, I should point out that what you said is not correct; here are the winners for the last 11 years

2012 Philippe Gilbert - Grand Tour stage winner and classics winner
2013 Rui Costa - Grand Tour stage winner
2014 Michal Kwiatkowski - Grand Tour stage winner and classics winner
2015 Peter Sagan - Grand Tour stage winner and classics winner
2016 Peter Sagan - Grand Tour stage winner and classics winner
2017 Peter Sagan - Grand Tour stage winner and classics winner
2018 Alejandro Valverde - Grand Tour and classics winner
2019 Mads Pederson - Grand Tour stage winner and classics winner
2020 Julian Alaphilippe - Grand Tour stage winner and classics winner
2021 Julian Alaphilippe - Grand Tour stage winner and classics winner
2022 Remco Evenepoel - Grand Tour and classics winner

Two of these riders have won a Grand Tour, and all of them have won at least one stage of a Grand Tour. Only one of these riders has not won a classic race. And if we went back over 50 years, we would see names like Armstrong, Bugno, Lemond, Roche, Zoetemelk, Saronni, Maertens, Hinault, Moser, Merckx and Gimondi - all Grand Tour winners and top riders.

Whilst we're talking about two very different sports, 50+ years of evidence in cycling suggests that in a one-off race the title is going to be won by a top athlete, if not the top athlete of that year.