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Chris Froome's move to Israel Start-up Nation sees him top list of peloton's highest earners with €5.5m annual salary

Tadej Pogacar's Tour de France win sees salary more than double, but runner-up Primoz Roglic needs a pay rise...

Chris Froome’s move to Israel Start-up Nation after 11 seasons with Team Sky and Ineos Grenadiers has seen him become the highest-paid rider in the peloton, according to a league table of pro riders’ salaries compiled by L’Equipe and Het Nieuwsblad.

The four-time Tour de France winner, who continues to struggle to recapture his top form following his horrific crash in 2019, leapfrogs Bora-Hansgrohe’s Peter Sagan to top the table below (with 2020 positions in brackets) with an annual salary of €5.5m.

Top earners 2021.PNG

The biggest gain on the table was made by Tour de France champion Tadej Pogacar, whose recent contract extension with UAE Team Emirates to 2026 takes him to €5m a year, the same as Sagan.

The table underline the financial clout of Ineos Grenadiers. With Froome – and on a reported €4.5m last year – having departed, 2018 Tour de France winner Geraint Thomas is now its highest paid rider, with a salary of €3.5m.

Five of the Welshman’s team-mates also make the list – with the advantage its huge budget gives it in attracting star names underlined by the fact that only two other teams, Jumbo-Visma and UAE Team Emirates, have more than one rider on the list.

There are four new entries on the list – Mathieu van der Poel and Wout van Aert, who both won their first Monuments last year after transferring their rivalry from cyclo-cross to the road, Adam Yates following his switch from Mitchelton-Scott to Ineos Grenadiers, and Astana’s Jakob Fuglsang.

Dropping out of the top 20 are Jumbo-Visma’s Tom Dumoulin, currently on an indefinite break from racing for mental health reasons, plus three – Fabio Aru, Greg van Avermaet, and Miguel Angel Lopez – who have moved onto new teams.

That demonstrates how switching teams can work both ways for a rider depending on where they are in their career, or how their recent results compare with those when they negotiated their last contract with their former employers – for example Aru, now with Qhubeka-Assos, has failed to follow-up his performances of several years ago when he won stages at all three Grand Tours and the overall title at the Vuelta.

Where a rider is in his current contractual cycle can also impact where they figure on the list. Eyebrows are bound to be raised by the fact that Primoz Roglic doesn’t even make the top 10 – likely to be a due to his last contract renewal with Jumbo-Visma, which runs through to the end of 2023 having taken place in summer 2019.

Since then, the Slovenian has won the Vuelta twice and the 2020 Liege-Bastogne-Liege and was runner-up in last year’s Tour de France, and his performances in the past couple of seasons stand well ahead of many of those above him, and had he been in a position to look at switching teams for this year, it’s likely he’d be close to or at the top of the list.

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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14 comments

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OnTheRopes | 3 years ago
3 likes

A sponsor wants publicity and Chris Froome will give them all the publicity they want whether he is winning or out the back, how many other riders would get that?

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Rapha Nadal | 3 years ago
4 likes

€5.5m and straight out the back as soon as the going went up this week*.  Money well spent.

*No denying I'd be in the same position but it'd be a more cost effective one at least 

Avatar
Chris Hayes | 3 years ago
3 likes

Chris Froome's move to Israel Start-up Nation sees him top list of peloton's highest earners....and unfortunately close to the back of the peloton.  

I sincerely hope he can regain his earlier form.  His Stage 19 Giro win was one of the most exciting things I've seen on a bike....

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Organon replied to Chris Hayes | 3 years ago
1 like

Good for him, but I have to agree, there has been a generational shift, and he is on the wrong side. Luckily taxes are low in Monaco.

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Chris Hayes replied to Organon | 3 years ago
0 likes

It's happened so suddenly too.  We thought the future was Bernal, Kruijswik and Roglic...but now it's Pogacar, Geoghan-Hart, and Pidock....

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Gkam84 | 3 years ago
0 likes

This is really an indication of more money than sense. It's not like they'll even get value for money. He's done, over and out.

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mdavidford replied to Gkam84 | 3 years ago
6 likes

Isn't it more an indication that a rider's value is more in the power they have as a mobile billboard than it is in their potential for winning things?

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Awavey replied to mdavidford | 3 years ago
2 likes

Id have thought so, they were a team who last year the media at races barely covered, to this year they had a moto camera bike following Froome for great chunks of one stage as he sat by himself in with the team cars.

even when he isnt challenging at the sharp end, its more media exposure for them than theyd have got otherwise

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Gkam84 replied to Awavey | 3 years ago
0 likes

Awavey wrote:

Id have thought so, they were a team who last year the media at races barely covered, to this year they had a moto camera bike following Froome for great chunks of one stage as he sat by himself in with the team cars.

even when he isnt challenging at the sharp end, its more media exposure for them than theyd have got otherwise

I don't know, I saw quite a lot of them, but then I chat to a couple of their riders, this year they've already started to win things and getting the attention without having to have Froome. They've Dan Martin, Sep Vanmarcke, Michael Woods, James Piccoli, Alex Dowsett to name a few. They've some great young riders coming through. The only thing I don't like about the team is the name. It's similar to the Middle Eastern state's sports washing away their human rights records.

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PpPete replied to mdavidford | 3 years ago
1 like

Yes, but that's a pretty short shelf-life if he doesn't get back to a level where he can at least challenge his former team-mates at Ineos.

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EddyBerckx replied to PpPete | 3 years ago
1 like

PpPete wrote:

Yes, but that's a pretty short shelf-life if he doesn't get back to a level where he can at least challenge his former team-mates at Ineos.

it's a gamble...but what an amazing story it would be if he did it? The amount of positive publicity they would get would be through the roof...and the pics of him in that kit would become iconic.

chances are it won't happen...but would be very interesting if it does.

Saying  that you'd still think theyd get more return on offering the 3 current wonder boys a massive pay rise to ride for them

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Secret_squirrel replied to mdavidford | 3 years ago
2 likes

So basically Froome is now the Anna Kournikova of Cycling?yes

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Organon replied to Secret_squirrel | 3 years ago
0 likes

Nope, he has actually won something. [Had to google her, the name was familiar.]

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Sniffer replied to Organon | 3 years ago
2 likes

Any excuse to google pictures of Anna Kournikova? 

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