That describes a good chunk of domestic riders in any country, including the US. I used to ride with a few domestic pros and almost all of them worked in the winter to try and save up enough to get through the race season.

Totally sh!t job, honestly. Very little financial independence and one bad crash can put you in the hurt locker in more ways than one.

I was always jealous, though, and dying to make the breakthrough myself.

seems like most sports have a pretty sharp change in income.

basically 0 at the minor league level then suddenly really good at the top level.

what if engineering was like that? heh

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

I'd guess you'd either try to be at the top or find something else to do...especially if you were relied on the income to get by in life.

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Mat Steinmetz

51-SPEEDSHOP.com - instagram - @matsteinmetz - facebook

unless you loved engineering!

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

Yep, sorry. Was not thinking and confused what some typical neopros were making with the minimum.

Carry on.

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Steve

http://www.PeaksCoachingGroup.com

If you want to be an engineer at the top ranks of an R&D organization you had better love it. It's equal parts vocation, obsession and profession.

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Less is more.

A little insight into the mind set of low level low paid pro athletes.

The son of a friend of mine is in his 3rd year in minor league baseball after graduating from college. He is not a prospect and probably will never make it beyond AA. I think he is making something like $1000/mo plus a meal per diem during the season. In the off season he works camps and clinics and has a part time job but he is still probably not earning more than $20K a year. ( he did get a free college education from baseball which puts him light years ahead of most low level pro cyclists).

His view is he that at least for the first 3 years, he is making more money than his college buddies who went to law school and not that much less than a typical MOP college graduate. And he is having way more fun . . . . His plan is to move on when it stops being fun and he does not expect to be doing this very long. He's got a degree and should be able to parlay 3 or 4 years as a professional baseball player into a better job than he would have gotten as some run of the mill college graduate. He's also gotten to be pretty good friends with some young millionaires as they pass through on their way up so between that and the fact he is a minor hometown hero, his prospects are good.

All and all, not a bad way to spend a few years while you are young.

Are they paying $12k/year?

Apples/oranges

This is a thread about pro cyclists... but Jack and Mat Steinmetz pulled in a comparison against engineering salaries so I put in my opinion regarding the level of commitment people apply to their "job" vs. something like cycling. It's apples and oranges only because engineering, by and large, is not a spectator sport and doesn't usually require feats of exceptional physical strength, coordination, or agility and the mental leaps required are hard for a play-by-play announcer to describe ;) .

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Less is more.

I always liked that show Junkyard Wars.
That was sort of like spectator engineering =)

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

Also, I believe in the early 90's he won a race (or maybe a series) where the purse was $1 million.

AS far as rider salaries go I'd suggest that Pro male cycling is a better paying job than most. The riders on a Protour team probably split a much higher % of the teams income than almost any other type of business.

Pro Football for instance has about a 50/50 split of profits with plays, I bet BMC mgt does get have of the profits, and the engineers at IBM don't get anywhere near 1/2 the profit to split.

I like womans racing, but in most cases its likely a losing operation as a business. If anyone here wants to start a Pro womens team its easy (relative to a Protour or NFL team) Just find some sponsers and hire some riders. Heck ecven my non racing riding club gets some sponsership. The downside is unless you are very astute at running a team you will be digging into yor pocket to keep a team afloat even with paying next to nothing for salaries.

I suspect that Katie Compton and K Armstrong made as much as the next 50 best paid women combined over the past 6 -7 years in the US.

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Styrrell

Yes but it really was an annuity and was split with the team. He never cashed a check for 1 million. He was likely making well over 1 mil when he got cancer though

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Styrrell

Rather than engineers who actually have 9-5 engineering jobs, low level professional athletes are more like the 25 year old guy who has 4 roommates and a crappy day job to pay for the shop in his garage he spends all his free time in working on his invention (or, to put a modern twist on it, his "app"). His engineering is a passion and obsession, not a "job." By the time he is 30, he'll either be a millionaire or move on.

I like the analogy.
He is the guy building computers in his moms basement.

most of those guys went nowhere but a few ended up being Dell or Jobs

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

Yeah the triple crown, Lance has said that he never received most of the money.

Any pro sport is basically entertainment when it comes to the economics. Supply and demand. Same as anywhere. Freaking Kim Kardashian is a millionare.

Yep, three races. US Pro championships, a stage race in WV, and one other.

Sorta a joke. Some "dealings" alleged on Lance's ends.

These are the people who really move me personally. Good enough (great enough!) to make the minors. 100% massive work and dedication with very little to show for it. Gotta love em.

it is...thats all it is.
Most Pro Athletes that are in the top 10% of their perspective sports have lives that resemble gong shows for the most part.

Track & Field , not cycling but pretty detailed info.


http://trackandfieldathletesassociation.org/...lete-survey-results/

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Styrrell

Paraphrased this from another forum - In a profession where there's no/low barrier to entry and no lasting product produced from the output, 90% of the people will never make any money, 9% may make a good living, and the remaining 1% can make a very good living.

Covers sports, entertainment etc... If your sport doesn't have a lot of money in play, that 1% can be a handful of people just barely making a living.