After a good Olympic Games, where she took eighth place in the mass start race, Katarzyna Niewiadoma stayed in France for a longer period of time to achieve the greatest success of her career. She rode phenomenally in the women's Tour de France. She came second on the fifth stage, then took the leader's jersey and didn't give it up until the end. She won the entire race by just four seconds over second-place Dutchwoman Demi Vollering. What reward awaits her for her final triumph?
Here are the earnings for the women's Tour de France. How much will Niewiadoma get?
As we read on the official website of the race, the prize pool in the women's Tour de France is a mere 250,000 euros (at the current exchange rate: approx. PLN 1.065 million). The unknown, as the winner, will take one-fifth of this amount, exactly 50,000 euros (approx. PLN 123,000). The second-placed Vollering and the third-placed Pauliene Rooijakkers will have to settle for even smaller sums, receiving 25,000 and 10,000 euros, respectively.
In addition to the bonuses for the three best cyclists, there are also prizes for places in the individual stages. These, however, are not very impressive. The best rider gets 4,000 euros, the next 2,000, and the third one a thousand. In total, the 20 fastest riders can count on a payout in each stage. Each subsequent rider receives less and less, and in the case of the 20th rider, we are talking about a mere… one hundred euros.
That's how much Katarzyna Niewiadoma ultimately earned. A surprising comparison. This disproportion is overwhelming.
So if we add to Niewiadoma's main prize the bonuses for second, third, two fourth and sixth places in the individual stages, then we will know the total amount she earned. This is exactly 56,480 euros, or 240.6 thousand zlotys. Second in the general classification, Vollering earned 41,370 euros, and third Rooijakkers – 13,130 euros.
The amounts seem very low compared to those that Iga Świątek, for example, can count on. In the tournament in Cincinnati, from which she has just been eliminated, a larger prize than for the triumph in the Tour de France is for reaching the quarterfinals (67 thousand euros). In turn, its winner receives around 480 thousand euros, which is almost twice as much as the entire prize pool in the race. Definitely higher stakes also apply in men's cycling. Men earned 10 times more for the Tour de France (500 thousand euros for the victory, etc.). It should be noted, however, that they raced for three weeks, and women for eight days.