1) Eddy Merckx (34)

With 525 victories in an 18-year professional cycling career, there isn’t an awful lot Eddy Merckx, the Cannibal, failed to achieve in cycling.

Therefore, it’s no surprise to see the five-time former Tour de France winner top of the tree when it comes to all-time Tour stage wins, with 34 stage wins to his name in all.

His first arrived in 1969, after an attack on the Ballon d’Alsace, and by the time the race finished he had a further five to his name including a solo win on stage 17 when his effort striking out alone over the Tourmalet, Soulur and Aubisque saw him finish the stage suffering with the effects of hypoglycaemia.

After finishing that Tour as overall winner by nearly 18 minutes, points classification winner, King of the Mountains, combination prize winner and the combativity award, Merckx went on to win 34 Tour de France stages in all, and 64 across all three Grand Tours – both still records today.

3) Bernard Hinault (28)

Le Blaireau remains the last French winner of the Tour de France, having picked up his fifth overall title in 1985.

Between 1978 and 1986, Hinault also picked up 28 stage wins, and prior to Alberto Contador was the only rider to win all three Grand Tours twice.

Hinault won three times at his final Tour in 1986, despite riding as domestique to Greg Lemond – two were in individual time trials, but he also won on Alpe d’Huez after a stinging attack, crossing the finish line arm in arm with Lemond.

Hinault would go on to finish that race in second place meaning, between 1978 and 1986, every Grand Tour he finished was in either first or second place.

4) Andre Leducq (25)

Andre Leducq was one of France’s foremost cyclists in the interwar period, winning the Tour twice and picking up 25 stage wins in the process.

A former amateur world road race champion, Leducq was in seemingly unstoppable form in the 1932 edition, winning the third stage in Bordeaux to claim the race lead and maintaining it all the way to Paris, picking up five more stage wins in the process.

The time bonuses awarded for stage winners at the time,meant the Frenchman won by more than 24 minutes overall, though had the race been decided on overall time alone, Germany’s Kurt Stopel would have only been three seconds back.

That race also saw him pass 20 stage wins – only the second rider ever to do so after Nicolas Frantz. Victory in Paris on the final stage confirmed his place as the race’s most successful rider up until that point.

6) Nicolas Frantz (20)

Nicolas Frantz was the first rider to reach 20 stage wins at the Tour de France, which he did across six editions from 1924 to 1929.

The Luxembourg rider was a two-time back-to-back Tour de France champion too, and held the yellow jersey from start to finish in the 1928 race.

He clocked his 20th stage victory in Paris on the final day of the following year’s race, but only raced one more time at the Tour de France when national teams were introduced – finishing 45th in 1932.

7) Francois Faber (19)

Though born in France, and considering himself a Frenchman, Faber’s father was from Luxembourg, making Faber the first foreign winner of the Tour de France in 1909.

Faber, who also won Bordeaux-Paris in 1911 and Paris-Roubaix in 1913 relished increment conditions, and that paid off when he won the Tour.

Second the previous year, having won his first four stages, Faber starred in 1909 in foul weather for racing – bagging victory on the second day after a 200km solo effort on the 398km stage to Metz.

That set the tempo for the rest of the race, with the Luxembourg rider winning again the following day in freezing conditions after attacking on the Ballon d’Alsace with more than 100km still to race.

In all, Faber won five consecutive stages – still a Tour record – and would surely have been the first to 20 career wins were it not for the First World War, where he was killed in action.

8) Jean Alavoine (17)

Frenchman Jean Alavoine’s career was also disrupted by the Great War, with the two-time French champion collecting six stage wins pre-war and then a further 11 after the war.

Also a two-time Giro d’Italia stage winner – where he also finished third overall in 1920 – Alavoine’s most notable successes came in the first Tour de France after the war.

Winner of the fourth stage, Alavoine made it two from two the following day in Bayonne; the 482km (300-mile) stage was the longest in Tour history.

A versatile rider, Alavoine also won a mountain stage to Perpignan in the 1919 race before two further victories in Marseille and Paris – the latter, on the final day, seeing him snatch second place from Eugene Christophe overall.

Alavoine was second overall again in 1922, after three consecutive stage wins – again including the 482km stage from Les Sables d’Olonne to Bayonne, and two wins in the mountains – but lost his chance of winning the race after suffering from a cold and several mechanical issues.

9=) Rene Le Greves (16)

A silver medallist on the track in 1932, French sprinter Rene Le Greves turned professional on the road in 1933 and won his first Tour de France stage that same year in Caen.

Usually stronger in the second half of the Tour, Le Greves picked up another 15 stage wins in all, including six in 1936, which he rode as French national champion.

His final victory arrived in 1939 before, like so many of his peers, his professional cycling career was to be curtailed by the war.

9=) Charles Pelissier (16)

Three-time French cyclo-cross champion Charles Pelissier was the younger brother of French riders Francis and former Tour winner Henri but clocked more stage wins than both of them combined.

His record of eight stage wins in the 1930 Tour still stands today, shared with Eddy Merckx and Freddy Maertens, and Pelissier also pulled on the yellow jersey three times thanks to his stage wins.

His success in 1930 saw him win the first stage to wear the yellow jersey and then – after a further three stage victories – finish with four consecutive wins in the final four stages too.

Only Mario Cipollini in 1999 has matched those four consecutive wins since, and Pelissier’s record is even more remarkable when you consider he was in the top three on 18 of the 21 stages.

It was only in the high mountains that he lost time, with the 50 minutes he ceded to Andre Leducq between Nice and Grenoble costing him any hope of overall victory.