Axel Merckx

Axel Merckx
Personal information
Full name	Axel Merckx
Born	8 August 1972 (age 52); Uccle, Belgium
Height	1.91 m (6 ft 3 in)
Weight	77 kg (170 lb)
Team information
Current team	Hagens Berman Jayco
Discipline	Road
Role	Rider (retired); General manager; Team manager;
Rider type	All-rounder
Professional teams
1993	Motorola (stagiaire)
1994	Team Telekom
1995–1996	Motorola
1997–1998	Team Polti
1999–2000	Mapei–Quick-Step
2001–2002	Domo–Farm Frites–Latexco
2003–2005	Lotto–Domo
2006	Phonak
2007	T-Mobile Team
Managerial teams
2009–	Trek–Livestrong
2011	Team RadioShack
Major wins
	Grand Tours Giro d'Italia 1 individual stage (2000) Stage races Tour de l'Ain (2003) One-day races and Classics National Road Race Championships (2000) GP de Wallonie (2001)
Medal record
Representing Belgium
Men's road bicycle racing
Olympic Games

Axel Eddy Lucien Jonkheer Merckx^[2] (born 8 August 1972) is a Belgian former professional road bicycle racer and the son of five-time Tour de France champion Eddy Merckx. He is team director of UCI Continental team Hagens Berman Jayco.^[3]

In his professional career (1993–2007), he won the Belgian national road race championship in 2000 and a bronze medal in the road race at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens.

Cycling career

Born in Uccle, Axel Merckx became a professional cyclist in 1993, winning the Belgian national road race championship in 2000. He vowed to make his mark by accomplishing feats that had eluded his father, such as winning a Tour de France stage at Alpe d'Huez and the Paris–Tours classic. He did not succeed, but competed in eight Tours de France and finished as the highest-placed Belgian rider six times. His personal best finish was tenth in the 1998 edition.

Merckx won the bronze medal in the road race at the 2004 Games in Athens, breaking free in the final kilometre.

During the 2006 Tour de France, Merckx announced that he signed a new contract for one extra season with Phonak, later renamed iShares. He stated that this would be his last season as a professional road bicycle racer. However, after Phonak announced that it would stop sponsoring the cycling team, Merckx signed a contract with Team T-Mobile, where he had started his professional career. During the 2006 Tour Merckx was instrumental in forcing the pace of the peloton for teammate Floyd Landis who won the Tour. He was oftentimes the only teammate able to stay with Landis and the group of favorites and he initially finished 31st overall, however it was later discovered that Landis had failed a doping control after stage 17 and the Tour win was revoked.

Merckx announced his retirement from professional cycling at the end of the 2007 Tour de France.^[4] He won his last race at Lommel, in August 2007.^[5]

His name was on the list of doping tests published by the French Senate on 24 July 2013 that were collected during the 1998 Tour de France then retested in 2004. Merckx was not one of then 18 riders named as testing positive for EPO but was on a list of 12 named riders whose test results were listed as "suspicious".^[6]

Merckx is the owner and directeur sportif of the Hagens Berman Jayco team.^{[citation needed]}

Personal life

Merckx married Canadian triathlete Jodi Cross in 1997, and they lived in Kelowna, British Columbia. They have two children, Axana (born 5 May 2001) and Athina Grace (born 29 June 2005).^{[citation needed]}

As of April 2024, Merckx was in a relationship with American cyclist Chloe Dygert, with whom he lives in Belgium.^[7]

When his father was made a baron—a personal title—in Belgium, he also received the hereditary title Écuyer (in French) or Jonkheer (in Dutch). Thereby Axel Merckx has also been ennobled.^[8]