"PRO" Cycling Discussion

Questions about bike hire abroad and everything light bike related. No off-topic chat please

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nathanong87
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by nathanong87

if somehow france could charge people to stand next to the road to watch live cycling.

by Weenie


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ave
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by ave

>In what other sport (of comparable size) has their top athletes on such a pittance. I can't think of any.

First of all top cyclists earn a lot more than the minimum wage.
So, we can take the last qualifier to the Summer Olympics 100m dash, and check his earnings.

Or take the less watched sports. Like wrestling, weightlifting.
Also, I don't think Hungarian multiple olympic kayak champions earn more than the minimum proteam cyclist wage.

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Tinea Pedis
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by Tinea Pedis

KWalker wrote:I used to date one of the top female olympic weightlifters

...



Tinea Pedis wrote:In what other sport (of comparable size)


bricky21 wrote:Professional athletes negotiate their wages, so it's difficult to make an argument that they are under or overpaid. If cycling generated the sort of annual revenue that the NFL does I'm pretty sure we'd see the same type of salaries.

Aside from the contradiction in your post, my point centred around the minimum World Tour wage. Which is hardly negotiable.

First of all top cyclists earn a lot more than the minimum wage.

See above. There are plenty on close to, if not on, the minimum.

nathanong87
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by nathanong87

Does anyone have the data to say what the average or median WT PRO is making. The screenshots i posted were just 'minimum' , Who knows, team sky or whatever super team (with more money) could be paying all their athletes above the minimum (basement) set by the UCI (?) ... i doubt it, but this 'minimum' wording is weird.

the minimum* base salary for an MLS soccer rookie is 34k, and usually is capped for their initial 1-2 seasons, although players like Freddy adu somehow got around this their first year (?). I think the MLS even published online every single player's salary. Is there something that exists for cycling WT? or is that all confidential. Heck even at my old college, every year the newspaper published every professor and sports coach's salary. (i think it was mandatory)
Last edited by nathanong87 on Fri May 09, 2014 8:12 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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tymon_tm
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by tymon_tm

athletics is where you'll find really poor people.. for real :lol: just like in case if winter disciplines, only the very best earn good money, the rest has to do crazy stuff (like work few shifts or strip for a magazine) in order to finance their career.
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stella-azzurra
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by stella-azzurra

I never took drugs to improve my performance at any time. I will be willing to stick my finger into a polygraph test if anyone with big media pull wants to take issue. If you buy a signed poster now it will not be tarnished later. --Graeme Obree

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stella-azzurra
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by stella-azzurra

Tuft in Pink! well deserved.
I never took drugs to improve my performance at any time. I will be willing to stick my finger into a polygraph test if anyone with big media pull wants to take issue. If you buy a signed poster now it will not be tarnished later. --Graeme Obree

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prendrefeu
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by prendrefeu

nathanong87 wrote: Heck even at my old college, every year the newspaper published every professor and sports coach's salary. (i think it was mandatory)


OT: If your old college was a NPO which most education institutions are in the US, it is part of their regulations to disclose to any member of the public the salaries of their employees - not necessarily by name (unless they choose to), but by title. If you went to an FPO - such as DeVry Tech, University of Pheonix or similar - they are not regulated in anyway. Your college newspaper just executed it's right to public information and chose to publish said information, it wasn't mandatory. :wink:
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Rob81
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by Rob81

the no minimum wage seems a lot like a legalization of "under the table" payments and/or guys selling used stuff to have an income (I guess I read this second "option" on Gaimon's blog).
The minimum is tricky too, wasn't last year or few years ago that they found some teams using "double" contracts? Also this was written in Millar's book.
Minimum wage with a (substantial) part that goes to taxes, retirement fund, etc etc...and a "separate" under the table contract just with net (no taxes).

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stella-azzurra
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by stella-azzurra

Giro 2014 leader list?

Straight out of 2005/2006?: Basso, Evans, Scarponi, Pellizotti, Cunego
I never took drugs to improve my performance at any time. I will be willing to stick my finger into a polygraph test if anyone with big media pull wants to take issue. If you buy a signed poster now it will not be tarnished later. --Graeme Obree

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Leviathan
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by Leviathan

Rob81 wrote:the no minimum wage seems a lot like a legalization of "under the table" payments and/or guys selling used stuff to have an income (I guess I read this second "option" on Gaimon's blog).
The minimum is tricky too, wasn't last year or few years ago that they found some teams using "double" contracts? Also this was written in Millar's book.
Minimum wage with a (substantial) part that goes to taxes, retirement fund, etc etc...and a "separate" under the table contract just with net (no taxes).


The economics of (most) salary negotiations have been pretty well studied, and essentially a large part of the reason why in MANY sports the base level is very low is an application of the "bread today, Jam tomorrow" principle, the idea is that NeoPros are willing to accept very low levels as the payout of eventual "success" is very high - in the case of sports this has a magnified effect due to sponsorships, endorsements and, increasingly, payments for turning up at Sportives.

US Pro sports are not a good comparison as, given the franchise model which is designed to keep owners in the money, coupled with collective negotiations and salary caps, you've essentially got an oligopoly, not a free market.

A more realistic comparison for Pro Cyclists may be found in the salary pyramid of drug dealers, like here http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_levitt_ ... _economics

DartanianX
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by DartanianX

Boonen's new custom bike.

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dereksmalls
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by dereksmalls

And then there is women's professional cycling where there is essentially no minimum salary at all either

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LouisN
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by LouisN

stella-azzurra wrote:Tuft in Pink! well deserved.


+ 1000 :beerchug: !!!

Louis :)

OJ
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by OJ

Looking at the article 10 in this document, the highest minimum for Pro Team is 36 300€, so basically $50k. If you have most of your costs covered by the team and don't have a family, that's not too bad. Add family to the mix and the fact that pushing to that level makes it very difficult to study and prepare for life after the potentially short professional career. You definitely will not be saving any money at that income level.

I work for a global company and our US sales people start at $45k base and in 2013, average commission was little over $60k. Being a sales person in our organization is an easy job with good job security even over the past 5 years. Some of the people in sales positions, who started at the same time with me, are making quite a bit more than the starting salary and average commission. Benefits are average in our industry with the exception of very good plan to support people pursuing graduate degrees for career development.

I also chased the pro "dream" for a while, but was luckily so lazy and lacking talent, that I was able to pull the plug on this plan before getting into bigger trouble. I know few guys who were top amateurs and low(er) level professional for 5-10 years and finding a career or even a job after the cycling thing ends has been challenging to say the least. You have to be quite good to get to the 36-50k€ salary bracket and even at that point you are basically living paycheck to paycheck unless you get into price money often enough. So yeah, professional cyclist doesn't make much money, but they do have a pretty cool job in my opinion.
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by Weenie


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