Marcel Kint

Marcel Kint (20 September 1914 to 23 March 2002) was a Belgian professional road racing cyclist who won 31 races between 1935 and 1951. His finest year was 1938, when he won the World Cycling Championship, three stages of the Tour de France and the season-long competition that was the forerunner of today's UCI ProTour. A one-day classics specialist, he won Paris-Roubaix, Gent-Wevelgem and Paris-Brussels, and was the only rider to win La Flèche Wallonne three times in a row until Alejandro Valverde did so in 2016. World War II halted his career at its peak and left him the longest reigning world champion in cycling history, holding the rainbow jersey until 1946. That year, in the final of the world championship in Zurich, he was stopped by home supporters while racing for the finish with Hans Knecht and had to settle for second. He also took Six Days and other track wins with Rik Van Steenbergen in the late 1940s.