After the victory of Chris Froome in the Tour de France, it comes as no surprise that his Sky Procycling team tops the prize money list for the three week race, with a grand total of €525,690. Virtually all of this was down to Froome himself, including the prize of €450,000 for the overall victory, plus €8,000 for each of the three stages he took, but no rider wins the Tour alone.
Race tradition has been written into a set of rules at Team Sky, and so all of this money will be shared amongst the riders at the end of the season, with 15% of it given to the team’s staff.
In second place, unsurprisingly, is Spanish team Movistar with €344,980, thanks to the prolific performance of Nairo Quintana. The Colombian not only earned the substantial sum of €200,000 for finishing second overall, but netted €25,000 for the polka-dot mountains jersey, €20,000 for the young riders’ white jersey, as well as €8,000 for his stage victory on Annecy-Semnoz. Quintana’s performance was far from the only earner in the Movistar camp, however, with Alejandro Valverde finishing eighth overall, and Rui Costa contributing two stage victories himself.
Despite missing out on the final podium, Team Saxo-Tinkoff finishes third in the prize money list, largely thanks to the €50,000 it earned for its victory in the team classification. Katusha’s Joaquim Rodríguez may have taken €100,000 for his third place overall, but this is trumped by Alberto Contador and Roman Kreuziger taking €70,000 and €50,000 for fourth and fifth respectively.
AG2R La Mondiale was the top performing French team, with €102,910 in total. This is hardly surprising, thanks to the fact that it had the best finishing Frenchman in Romain Bardet, and the only French stage winner in Christophe Riblon, who also picked up €20,000 for winning the overall combativity award.
The French team finished one place above Cannondale Pro Cycling, whose total of €79,110 included €25,000 for Peter Sagan’s green jersey.
While some teams did well out of the Tour’s prize fund, others did badly, with last placed Lampre-Merida going home with just €11,180 for its three weeks' work. The Italian team picked up very few results in the race, with all of its climbers and general classification riders struggling. Despite a promising eighth place in the team time trial, the best finisher from the blue-fuchsia-green team was Jose Serpa in 21st place.
Despite the brightness of its riders’ jerseys, Lampre-Merida had an almost completely anonymous Tour. The few bright spots in the entire race were Davide Cimolai’s fourth place in the second stage, and Roberto Ferrari’s three fifth places in the bunch sprints of stages five, 12 and 21.
FDJ.fr finished just one place above Lampre-Merida, with a total of just €12,890, which can only be seen as a disaster for the WorldTour team in its biggest race of the season. Much of this can be attributed to the misfortune of losing sprinter Nacer Bouhanni to an early crash, and 2012 stage winner Thibaut Pinot to a throat infection, but the team’s other big names - notably four-time stage winner Pierrick Fédrigo - did not seem to be at their best.
Cofidis and Sojasun were the next teams up on the list, with just €14,710 and €15,220 respectively, and featured very little in the daily prizes. His presence in the stage 19 break into Le Grand Bornand was enough to lift Cofidis’ Daniel Navarro into the top ten, however, which will justify the team’s invitation to the race in the eyes of many; mitigating organiser ASO’s decision to support the teams of the Tour’s home nation instead of arguably superior teams from abroad.
Sojasun provided the race with one of its most heroic moments of the race, as Julien Simon fought hard, but failed, to hold off the rest of the breakaway at the stage 14 finish in Lyon.
Arguably the biggest disappointment of the Tour was the BMC Racing Team though, winning just €17,710 with its roster of big-budget stars. 2011 race winner Cadel Evans and 2012 white jersey Tejay van Garderen both struggled, while World champion Philippe Gilbert barely featured.
The team’s race came close to being salvaged by van Garderen on Alpe d’Huez, but the American was caught with two kilometres to go, and his second place, and Gilbert’s fifth place in Calvi on stage three, were BMC Racing’s only top five finishes of the race.
For many teams, however, the biggest prize of all was the satisfaction of their sponsors, whose contribution to the team budget eclipses any prize money they might receive. To simply be invited to the Tour de France is a victory in itself for the smaller French teams, who don’t expect to compete with the bigger teams.
To be showing the sponsors logo on the TV and in the French media is often enough to keep the team’s backers happy and, in this respect, Team Europcar arguably won the biggest prize of all as it secured another two-year contract with the hire car firm.
Tour de France 2013 prize money won by team
Sky Procycling - €525,690
Movistar Team - €344,980
Team Saxo-Tinkoff - €205,780
Katusha Team - €134,900
Omega Pharma-Quick Step €121,260
AG2R La Mondiale - €102,910
Cannondale - €79,110
RadioShack-Leopard - €63,210
Team Argos-Shimano - €52,910
Belkin Pro Cycling - €52,260
Vacansoleil-DCM - €48,030
Garmin-Sharp - €45,930
Orica-GreenEdge - €44,670
Lotto-Belisol - €42,950
Team Europcar - €40,170
Astana Pro Team - €26,540
Euskaltel-Euskadi - €23,890
BMC Racing Team - €17,710
Sojasun - €15,220
Cofidis, Solutions Credits - €14,710
FDJ.fr - €12,890
Lampre-Merida - €11,180