Even Kooij and Cavendish had to bow to this pocket rocket, who is waving the sport goodbye after 50(!) wins

Chris Froome, Cadel Evans, Greg Van Avermaet, Jan Ullrich… all of them are giants of the sport with hugely impressive palmarès, yet none of them ever reached 50 professional victories. It’s a mark that only a select group of riders manage to hit, which makes it all the more striking that a retiring Italo-Pole like Jakub Mareczko did get there.

As a junior and U23 rider, Mareczko - then racing under the Italian flag - was the man to beat. Time and again he got the better of his contemporaries such as Caleb Ewan and Simone Consonni. At 20 he turned pro with the small Southeast team, and he immediately showed his raw speed. At the Tour of Taihu Lake he won an incredible seven of the nine stages.

A year later he began to feature in slightly bigger races. Just a few days after his 22nd birthday, he produced a huge surprise at the Tour of Turkey, where he beat André Greipel in a sprint. For context: that same year, the German would win on the Champs-Élysées. In 2017 and 2018 Mareczko sprinted to three second places at the Giro d’Italia, but that elusive Grand Tour stage win never came.

In those kinds of races, Mareczko’s limitations were quickly laid bare. He was lightning fast, no question, but he struggled as soon as the road tilted even slightly uphill. On top of that, three weeks of racing was simply too much for him: of the six Grand Tours he started during his career, he never once completed all 21 stages.

That was one of the main reasons top-level teams hesitated to fully commit to him. Two seasons in the WorldTour with CCC Team turned into a disappointment, and after a stint at Vini Zabù he ended up at Alpecin-Deceuninck. There he rode another Giro d’Italia alongside Mathieu van der Poel, but after two years he returned to Italy.

With Corratec – Vini Fantini the sharpest edge was already gone, and he finished his final seasons at continental level. By then he had switched to the Polish nationality, the country of his parents and also his own birthplace. He said goodbye to the sport in that country - but didn’t actually finish that farewell race, which feels almost symbolic for the way his career at the highest level went.

Mareczko never fulfilled all the lofty expectations. He never became the new Cipollini or the new Petacchi. But we shouldn’t underestimate just how quick the Italo-Pole really was. Yes, 42 of his 50 wins came outside Europe, but you have to be seriously fast to beat Olav Kooij twice at the ZLM Tour - or to beat Mark Cavendish at Settimana Internazionale Coppi e Bartali, just three months before Cavendish went on to win four stages at the Tour de France.

In longer and harder races, you rarely had to factor Mareczko into the equation. But when the stages were short and flat, he was often the man to beat. Even the greatest sprint legends regularly found themselves up against this purebred finisher. Roughly 120 riders in history have ever won more than 50 professional races. Whatever else may be said about his career, Jakub Mareczko can proudly take his place among that very select group.