Wout van Aert has signed a contract with Visma-Lease A Bike “for eternity”. He’s not alone as Chris Froome and Michael Woods are said to have “retirement contracts” meaning they can ride for their team as long as they wish. These are just some examples among several of long term contracts and they’re becoming increasingly common.
As a concept it’s great to see longer deals for the stability and security they can signify. But, and there’s always a but, the longer the contract, the more it gets broken. Soon we could see a new transfer market for riders as deals are broken and teams trade talent.
To start with all neo-pros have to get two year contracts, the idea being that they need time to settle into the job and two seasons to prove their worth. Plenty start with longer deals with teams keen to attract and retain them. Here a smaller but relevant story out today is that of 17 year old Paul Seixas signing going from Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale’s junior team to the World Tour, skipping their U23 squad. Yes Seixas is very talented and has impressed but there’s possibly a defensive component here. The team may quietly prefer to see him do a year in the U23s but they don’t want to lose him to another pro squad who could dangle a big salary (remember they lost Matteo Jorgenson this way as he preferred to sign with Movistar rather than wait). Seixas is one of many neo-pros starting on a three year deal, longer than the regulatory minimum. It’s been part of a trend towards longer contracts, anecdotally at least as duration isn’t always published.
One year deals, the minimum possible, are becoming rarer. One reason is if a rider moves teams then a single season probably isn’t enough to show what they’ve got. Teams sign riders earlier and earlier these days, gone are the days when the Tour de France rest day was a jobs fair. A lot of contracts for next year are written between March and May, plenty before. Yes there’s a UCI rule about not signing before August 1 but pre-contracts are the way around. A rider on a one-year contract, or another with one year remaining, needs results early in the season to bump their value and capitalise on it; they’ll lose bargaining power if not signed by the summer.
Indeed core riders, the kind who are expected to start World Tour classics and do the Tour de France are signed up earlier and earlier. It’s been common to field riders at the Tour de France who are staying with the team the following year. Some have been known to say to riders “sign this renewal or you won’t ride the Tour”. In way this has turned a one year deal into a de facto 18 month deal, a two year into 30 months and so on.
In the last few years we’ve had de jure longer contracts. Think of Egan Bernal at Ineos with a five year deal in January 2022 (weeks before his horror cash), more recently Carlos Rodriguez there on a four year deal. Many key riders are signed up until the end of 2028, think Jonas Vingegaard, Juan Ayuso or Mathieu van der Poel (not coincidentally the end of the three year World Tour cycle when big changes could be due; but that’s another story). See the Women’s World Tour too with Lotte Kopecky and Lorena Wiebes. It’s usually star riders, but not always as stalwarts like Luke Rowe for Ineos or Rudy Molard chez Groupama-FDJ have been locked-in too. At IPT Sylvan Adams has been excited about Derek Gee to the point of signing him up until 2028.
The Big Contract is Tadej Pogačar, the announcement of his renewal/extension with UAE is due. His existing one is interesting alone for the reported break clause of €100 million, as in if a team wants to hire him they’d have to pay UAE this sum. But if for some reason he had become really unhappy on the team, or even if he just wanted to move, it would probably go to arbitration. Clause, schmlause.
Forever?
Van Aert’s news has a bit of spin given it is touted to be for eternity, which is long a time. Particularly for a team that was trying an emergency merger this time last year. A contract is as good as the house. Yes pro cycling teams are increasingly becoming durable franchises; but they are remain brittle. As said here before there’s still no news on Lotto finding a replacement for Dstny; and if Evenepoel departs Soudal-Quickstep do the sponsors stay and pay? Inevitably for “career contracts” Van Aert was beaten by Mathieu van der Poel, the Dutchman’s 10 year deal with Canyon bikes was announced earlier this spring.
Chop n’ change
Arguably the time to lock a rider into a long term contract is when they’re young and on the up. However Visma-LAB have several examples to show a contract isn’t cast in concrete. See Cian Uijtdebroeks who changed teams over the winter after a brief saga, quitting Bora with a year left on his contract. Meanwhile in the opposite direction went Primož Roglič who was also under contract, until suddenly he wasn’t. Staying with Visma-LAB we should see Johannes Staune-Mittet unveiled as a Decathlon-Ag2r rider in the coming days despite the Norwegian having signed a contract with the Dutch squad until the end of 2026. You probably get the picture by now, a contract isn’t always what the headline says and having cited Visma, they’re not unique. Think of DSM and all the riders who have suddenly left before the end of their contract. Releases happen, especially if money greases the wheels.
Small print + T&Cs
We only see the headlines of duration and maybe the salary or an estimate appears in the media too. But contracts worth millions a year run to many pages and there can be all sorts of terms, conditions and more. That long deal could be conditional on achieving results, at least payments and bonuses can be.
Duration risk
It might sound obvious that the longer the deal the more likely it is go in the shredder. A one year deal that turns sour probably only has a few months left to run and both sides can put it down to experience; a five year deal that becomes toxic needs to be confronted.
It’s this duration that allows for divergence. At the time of signing employer and employee are by definition satisfied with each other. The further things get from the day, the greater the chance of one side being frustrated with the other. A rider whose performance goes up a level might ask for more in return; by contrast if the same rider sustains result-altering injuries do the team keep on paying at the old rate or try to agree a settlement? And so on for many more scenarios, think of the criticism dished out to Julian Alaphilippe by his own employer at times.
Conclusion
The longer the contract, the more likely it is to be modified or even broken. What we’ll see next is the knock-on effect with a larger secondary market of contracts where teams can trade riders, for a fee of course. A contract may only be valid for as long as both sides want it to be so.
The UCI’s regulation of this is only just beginning, some rules were tightened after Uijtdebroeks’s case but this was just a tidy-up exercise rather than defining the market rules like we see in other sports, notably soccer. Plus as much as the UCI sets the rules for the sport, it can’t get too far into employment regulation as this is a matter for the civil courts. For now it can only rely on joint agreements… which like long term contracts can always be torn up.
“His existing one is interesting alone for the reported break clause of €100 million, as in if a team wants to hire him they’d have to pay UAE this sum.”
I guess this is a lot of money for the TEAM while for it’s petro-sheik backers it’s a “second’s income shot to hell”.
“Cycling is the new golf” (sadly) becomes more true every day. Or maybe the new football?
I’d be anonymous if I dealt in exaggeration like that
If I dealt in exaggeration like that, I wouldn´t be anonymous no matter how hard I tried 🙂
But, seriously, the point of that termination clause and that preposterous sum of money is what it would cost *the other* team, not whether it´s just pocket money for the team´s backers.
(Although, there is more than one team with oil-rich backers…)
PS I thought “cycling is the new golf” had nothing to do with how much the pro riders are paid and everything to do with cyclists who do not get paid for riding but who have a vastly larger disposable income than the cyclists some 20-30(?) years ago and whose arrival in numbers has not only made high-end bikes outrageously expensive but also moved up the whole prize range from entry level to upper middle class, possibly to a point that is, in the end, not beneficial to anyone.
A couple of very good points – the one opening the post, to begin with 😉
Or may I add “beware that, when fighting Anons, you yourself do not become an Anon… if you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you” !
Keeping an eye on Froome’s results has become a morbid passtime for me, so it’s interesting to note he could ride ‘for eternity’ for IPT. Should we assume there’s some performance requirements? I get you might want to keep him around to go on sponsor rides etc but surely there’s another way to do that contractually?
It seems to me that IPT had a plan to base their all their racing around an in-form Froome. Obviously that didn’t happen. But since then they have turned it around and become an interesting team with a mix of experience and riders like Gee, Blackmore and Williams making breakthroughs.
Is Froome involved in that? A rider-mentor? Is he helping to set strategy and helping riders make these breakthroughs? He does have some personal experience of struggling to make his name and overcoming challenges.
Or maybe, as you say, he’s a nice ornament to attract sponsors. Would love to know more. An inrng deep-dive at some point?
Same here. It seemed a huge gamble to sign Froome due to mainly the crash recovery but also his age at the time of the move (which tickled me at the time as I’m about 3 months younger – see also Wayne Rooney’s retirement). It’d be interesting to see what he’s doing because he must be on a chunk of a wage.
How often do you see Froome training with team mates, in his copious social media output? (Assuming you’re not blocked by his racist partner who seems to run his media).
When asked if signing Froome has been value for money Adams has said aloud “absolutely not”. It’s hard to know the whole story but it seems he is not being paid as much as the initial headlines suggested, but still well paid and with a deal that covers him until he is 40, but he’s likely to stop sooner. From the sounds of things it seems like Adams might want the long contract to stop before but this one is harder to break or revise down.
As JV suggests though Froome can have other roles but we just don’t know much, he’s gone from a high profile rider to more discreet, posting the occasional advert on social media, and interviews are rare when there’s probably some interesting stories and things to explain.
I find Froome’s career fascinating. I hope for a well written post-career autobiography. Surely will be one of the most interesting and unusual tales in recent cycling history.
Much to explain, little truth to spare, I’m afraid. Which is common to most autobiographies, but becomes worse when people still have something to lose, be it only that percentage of reputation they might have been able to salvage.
Yes. Fair point. A well written and researched biography, then. There’s a great deal to unpack from a story that should be fascinating in itself and also illuminate the much of the wider story of cycling over the last 15-20 years.
JV, you can do as much research as you like, it doesn’t mean that all the people involved in Froome’s meteoric rise (including himself) are going to start telling the truth, whatever that is.
The truth would be very, very interesting.
An autobiography would be as worthless a read as Armstrong’s were.
I don’t see Froome retiring early, I think he’s shown that he is willing to keep taking the money no matter how bad a cyclist he now is. Plus, he’s 39, so presumably it’s just one more season.
He has every right to do this – Adams signed the contract.
As a side note, I still remember Italian cycling media getting the scoop before any official announcement about Froome having actually signed the rumoured deal because he had suddenly changed some head image on his social media featuring his Zoncolan victory. The photo had – by pure chance, I suppose! – some very visible Palestine flags being waved by tifosi. What a memory to be recalled in days like these.
I respect how Froome keeps winning.
They don’t call Adams the “Israeli-Canadian Donald Trump” for no reason. What kind of moron would pay a salary like this forever? Froome’s an insanely expensive “rent-a-friend” and that seems to be all he is these days.
The “Art of the (bad) Deal”?
This view of contracts not being hard law leaves me with an unpleasant sense of insecurity.
I’d like to see WVA ride for himself in grand tours. He could try to win the mountains and the points jersey in the TdF – it’s a possibility. He already has enough money, so why not sign somewhere for less and not be a domestique?
Retirement contracts are clearly a terrible idea, as Froome is now showing so wonderfully.
“I’d like to see WVA ride for himself in grand tours.”
Thank gawd there’s more to cycling (for some of us anyway) than grand tours – especially since they’ve become way too much radio controlled watts/kg contests. I’d rather see him try to win all 5 monuments along with Pogacar and MVdP.
I said grand tours because WVA already rides for himself in one-day races, Monuments included.
I too would like to see him try to win all five Monuments, and I think he’d have a better chance of doing that if he wasn’t potentially blunting his sharpness in one-day races by training as a grand tour domestique.
Riding for himself in GTs and possibly going for both of the jerseys I mentioned would only be a side-project.
I believe there is more to cycling than the grand tours for the vast majority of us here – and a majority of all road cycling fans with the possible exception of the US of A.
But the point was, I believe, not that WVA should target and concentrate on a GT, but that he should ride for himself and target a green or a polkadot jersey *instead of* riding for his team captain, as he has done (and as he presumably will continue to do, because it is in his contract and because he is a team player).
The question one could ask is whether that would somehow lessen his chances of doing well in the classics and winning the monuments. I´m far from sure, but I don´t think so
One of the themes behind this article is the difficulty in predicting future trajectory. Sky/Ineos have unearthed a series of so-called next big things but for various reasons none have lived up to the high hopes placed on them. Wasn’t Ivan Sosa the future several years ago?
This might end up killing for good smaller teams, especially Professionals and indipendent U23, unless some new regulation is introduced. A part of the sport which has been already struggling for years due to different reasons. Euskaltel, Bingoal are in a tight spot and Zalf is saying adieu.
Not the best for cyclists, I’m afraid, although some of them might think that this way they’ll get greater, more professional and richer opportunities. Many others just won’t have a chance (unless they’re French, I guess) and the access to the pro world will generally become more complicated, thus actually reducing the overall distributed talent level, unless, of course, a whole new grassroot system is properly put into place. If the latter was eventually carried out and if it worked, the whole process might even be good for the sport, as professional teams often were anything but professional. If nothing at all is done, young athletes are going to become more and more disposable cannon fodder on a market akin to publishing/libraries where books are given 2 weeks of shelf time (at best) to go bestseller or die. Of course such a dual market has got bigger prizes for the survivors, but the quality of the environment gets worse.
In football agents generate their income as a % of the fee on the transfer. However in cycling it must be as a % of the rider salary as trnsfer fees are still rare. I wonder if its agents also pushing this model as they secure themselfs more long term income and can build up a portfolio of long term committed riders. Instead of unsecure short term.