Eddy Merckx Hospitalized Again With Hip Infection — The 80-Year-Old Cycling Legend Faces A Seventh Surgery Since His December 2024 Crash And Says 'The Struggle Needs To End Now'
Eddy Merckx, the five-time Tour de France winner widely regarded as the greatest cyclist in the history of the sport, has been readmitted to a Brussels hospital with a persistent infection in his hip. The 80-year-old Belgian was admitted on Monday 30 March after experiencing severe pain overnight, and doctors have been unable to identify the precise source of the infection despite an aggressive course of intravenous antibiotics over the past fortnight.
The hospitalization is the latest chapter in a gruelling sixteen-month medical ordeal that began with a cycling crash near Brussels in December 2024, in which Merckx fractured his hip. Since that initial fall, the man they called 'The Cannibal' has undergone six surgical procedures — one temporary hip replacement, three permanent replacements, and two further interventions to address complications — and suffered a stroke during his recovery period.
Speaking to Flemish daily Het Laatste Nieuws from his hospital bed, Merckx did not disguise his frustration. "As I was in a lot of pain, I was admitted to hospital last Monday," he said. "The antibiotics are not fully effective. They are likely to operate on me again next Monday." His tone carried the weight of a man who has spent more time in hospital corridors over the past year than on his beloved bicycle. "The struggle needs to end now; I'm exhausted."
The infection is understood to have developed around the site of his most recent hip replacement, a complication that orthopaedic specialists say is not uncommon in patients who have undergone multiple procedures on the same joint in a compressed timeframe. Merckx's medical team has indicated that if the planned seventh operation does not resolve the infection, more radical surgical options may need to be considered — though the specifics of those alternatives have not been made public.
The news has sent ripples of concern through the cycling world at a time when Merckx's name has been invoked more frequently than at any point in the past half-century. Tadej Pogačar's extraordinary run of four consecutive Monument victories — Milan-San Remo, the Tour of Flanders, and now a potential clean sweep at Paris-Roubaix — has placed the Slovenian's achievements alongside those of Merckx in a way that no rider has managed since the Belgian's prime in the late 1960s and 1970s. Merckx himself had been generous in his assessment of Pogačar's spring, telling Belgian media earlier this month that he believed the UAE Team Emirates rider was capable of winning all five Monuments.
The stroke Merckx suffered during his recovery has left him unable to drive, and he relies on family members for transportation to his regular physiotherapy appointments. Despite the physical limitations, those close to him say his competitive spirit remains undimmed — he follows every major race on television and has continued to offer his views on the sport's biggest talking points from his recovery bed. His presence at the Tour de France start in Barcelona this July, once considered a formality for cycling's most decorated champion, is now understood to be in serious doubt.
Messages of support have poured in from across the peloton. Remco Evenepoel, Belgium's current generation standard-bearer, posted a brief message on social media: "Thinking of you, Eddy. The whole of Belgian cycling is with you." Alpecin-Deceuninck manager Philip Roodhooft, whose team's leader Mathieu van der Poel was preparing for Paris-Roubaix when the news broke, described Merckx as "the foundation on which everything in our sport is built."
For now, the cycling world waits — for the outcome of a seventh operation, for the resolution of an infection that antibiotics cannot seem to reach, and for the return to health of a man whose palmares of 525 professional victories, eleven Grand Tour titles, and nineteen Monument wins may never be matched. The struggle, as Merckx himself put it, needs to end. On that point, the entire sport is in unanimous agreement.