Alberto Contador’s team are top earners, Footon-Servetto lowest
Unsurprisingly, the team of Tour de France winner Alberto Contador, Astana, finished the Tour de France as the highest earning team in the 2010 Grand Boucle. The largest chunk of the money was of course brought in by the three-time Tour winner Alberto Contador in the form of a 450.000 euro winner’s check. A stage win from Alexandre Vinokourov also helped to pad the team’s coffers.
The nearly 500,000 euro sum sounds like a fair bit of money, but it’s considerably less than in 2009, when Astana put two riders, Contador and Armstrong, on the podium in Paris to rake in nearly 700,000 euros.
On the Saxo Bank side, Andy Schleck was the team’s top earner, with 2nd place overall and two stage wins. Fabian Cancellara leant some help as well with victories in both of the time trials in this year’s Tour de France.
Footon-Servetto performed better than expected, but still finished last among the participating teams with only 13.492 euros. If divided out equally amongst the team’s riders, that would make for a grand total of just under 1500 euros per rider for the young team. That’s a hard earned month’s pay.
1. Astana 488.886 euro
2. Saxo Bank 292 392
3. Rabobank 192,978
4. Caisse d’Epargne 114 604
5. Euskaltel 94.746
6. RadioShack 92.018
7. Omega Pharma 90,424
8. HTC Columbia 88.988
9. Lampre 81.796
10. Quick Step 78.058
11. Bbox 76.074
12. Garmin Transitions 55 352
13. AG2R La Mondiale 47 776
14. Cervelo 39.542
15. Katusha 38.966
16. Sky 36.992
17. Liquigas 33.092
18. Milram 27.118
19. 25 922 FDJ
20. Cofidis 20.372
21. BMC 15.872
22. Footon 13.492