Rik Van Looy, who has died aged 90, was the most dominant one-day cycle racer of the 1950s and 60s, nicknamed “the Emperor of Herentals” (after the Belgian city in which he lived) or “the Wheel Breaker”. He ended his 18-year career with a tally of 371 professional road race victories, which remains second only to that of Eddy Merckx. A double world road race champion, he was the first cyclist to triumph in the five great one-day classics known today as the Monuments.

He began racing at 14 and was lapped five times in his first race, but improved rapidly to win the Belgian amateur championship twice; he took a bronze medal in the amateur world championship at Lugano in 1953. He turned professional a week later and won his first two races in the following 48 hours.

With the coach Dries Claes to guide him, and Lomme Driessens as his team manager, Van Looy carved out a niche as a one-day classics specialist, winning Paris-Brussels and Gent-Wevelgem in 1956. He earned his nicknames rapidly – Rik II, to distinguish him from Henri “Rik” Van Steenbergen, his immediate predecessor as Belgian No 1, and “the Emperor,” for the imperial way he raced and his touch of style: sometimes he carried a perfumed handkerchief in his race jersey pocket.

By 1968 Van Looy had won all the major one-day races in the cycling calendar, plus back-to-back world titles in 1960 and 1961. The highlight was a clean sweep in the spring of 1962 of the Tour of Flanders, Gent-Wevelgem and Paris-Roubaix in eight days – an achievement matched only by Tom Boonen in 2012 – while wearing the rainbow jersey of the world champion. At the height of his fame, he was receiving a thousand fan letters a week.

Van Looy’s racing style did not rely on long-distance solo escapes in the style of Merckx or Fausto Coppi, or – these days – Tadej Pogačar. His teammates would dictate the pace, after which he would stretch and split the field with successive surges to create panic, whittling the peloton down to a number small enough for him to use his finish sprint to devastating effect, crossing the line with the broad grin that was his trademark. Solo victories – notably in the 1965 Paris-Roubaix – were the exception.

He relied heavily on his team, the disciplined “Red Guard”, bulldog-like racers who could smash a race to pieces in the wind – the first team to form a lead-out “train” to guide their chief in bunch sprints. They were paid better than most, but “you did whatever he wanted, including fetching beers, which he had a great fondness for mid-race,” said one teammate, the British cyclist Vin Denson.

At the 1963 world championships in Ronse, Belgium, Van Looy’s fellow Belgian Benoni Beheyt disobeyed team orders, appearing to hold Van Looy back with his right arm in the finish sprint as he took the title ahead of his nominal leader. The affair made massive waves, with rumours that Van Looy subsequently used his influence to ensure that Beheyt never won another major race. Eventually, however, Van Looy said that the only person to blame was himself for not racing more cleverly.

The Red Guard was not a comfortable environment: Merckx lasted a single year, 1965; the rift between the two men was only patched up in recent years. Their rivalry was a war of words – and bitter arguments among fans – whipped up by the obsessive Flandrian press; Merckx accused Van Looy of negative racing; Van Looy said that watching Merckx was a legitimate tactic.

Van Looy raced three-week grand tours as he would a classic, holding little back; he was no match for the specialists such as Jacques Anquetil, although the tactic won him 30 stages in the Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta a España. He did not start his first Tour de France until 1962; it was what his team wanted, he told me, and by the age of 28, “it was too late”. He rode a strong first week at the 1962 Tour then crashed; a year later he won four stages and the green points jersey – prompting speculation that he could win the race overall – but a year later another crash ruled him out on day one.

He was born in Grobbendonk, near Antwerp, the son of a jobbing builder; aged 13 and a soccer player, he started cycling when he took on a six-hour paper round to support the family, and started amateur racing the following year.

In 1955 Van Looy married Nini Mariën, the daughter of a cafe-owning family in nearby Herentals; Nini, whose father and brothers also raced, introduced her husband to Claes, the coach who would play a key role in his career.

Van Looy retired without fanfare in 1970. He worked as a team manager, ran a stud farm, and for 18 years was the president of the third division soccer club in Herentals, where his son André played. He rarely gave interviews, knowing that his relations with Merckx would top the agenda; he rarely appeared at major races.

Only Merckx and Roger de Vlaeminck have managed to equal Van Looy’s feat of winning all five Monument classics: the Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix, Milan-San Remo, Liège-Bastogne-Liège and the Giro di Lombardia.

When I met him in 2011, he was most proud, however, of his work with the cycle-racing school in Herentals, where he could see young cyclists getting the opportunities that had eluded him.

Nini predeceased Van Looy in 2021; he is survived by his children, Marie Louise and André.

• Rik (Henri) Van Looy, cyclist, born 20 December 1933; died 17 December 2024