Mathieu van der Poel and Marianne Vos top prize money standings in Spring Classics

Dutch duo earn tens of thousands throughout the spring, closely followed by Jasper Philipsen and Lotte Kopecky

15:46, Thursday 25th April 2024

George Poole

Junior Writer

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Marianne Vos (left) and Mathieu van der Poel (right) have earned €122,673 between them this spring

Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) and Marianne Vos (Visma-Lease a Bike) racked up the most prize money in the respective men’s and Women’s WorldTours, with Van der Poel earning €84,500 and Vos €38,173.

Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) is the second-biggest earner in the men’s field with €60,400 and Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx-Protime) is second in the Women’s WorldTour with €35,081.

For this list, we've judged the Spring Classics campaign as the period of one-day racing between Omloop Het Nieuwsblad in late February and last weekend’s Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and taken into account only the WorldTour races. For the women, there were 11 WorldTour races in this period. For the men, there were 12.

It's worth noting that the prize money riders win is usually shared among teammates and members of staff. With that in mind, one glance at the results shows that Alpecin-Deceuninck will be one happy team, with Van der Poel and Philipsen at the top of the prize money standings, collectively earning €144,900 for the team.

At Paris-Roubaix, the team won €53,700 between them as a result of Van der Poel’s victory (€30,000), Philipsen’s second place (€22,000) and Gianni Vermeersch’s sixth-place finish (€1,700).

Tallying up the prize money highlights the disparity between the men’s and women’s pelotons. The top 20 men earned €417,750 in prize money in the Classics. The top 20 women earned €253,076 across the same period — that's before considering the difference in base salaries.

In the women's peloton, Vos won the most prize money, followed by Kopecky, followed by Elisa Longo Borghini (Lidl-Trek). The Italian's victory at the Tour of Flanders and consistency throughout the racing earned her a total sum of €31,892.

Behind Van der Poel and Philipsen in the men’s standings sat Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) on €41,000, Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) on €34,400 and Nils Politt (UAE Team Emirates) on €22,100.

Where Van der Poel enjoyed the best Spring Classics campaign of his career, his rival Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike) had no such luck, with a crash at Dwars door Vlaanderen taking him out of racing. The 29-year-old had earned €8,000 up to this point across Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and E3 Saxo Classic, but he ended up 20th in the men’s standings given his only victory of the spring, Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne, was not a WorldTour race. It did, however, earn him €11,265.

Flanders Classics continues to award financial parity

Van der Poel (left) and Elisa Longo Borghini (right) stand on the podium at the Tour of Flanders

Two years ago, Flanders Classics, the organisers of some of the biggest Spring Classics, made the landmark decision to award equal prize money for the male and female winners of the Tour of Flanders, a first for any of the Monument Classics. A year later, it extended this commitment to all the races under its umbrella. This season, it has stayed true to the promise.

As such, equal prize money was awarded to Vos and Jan Tratnik (Visma-Lease a Bike) at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Wiebes and Pedersen at Gent-Wevelgem and Longo Borghini and Van der Poel at the Tour of Flanders.

Other organisers have yet to follow the lead of Flanders Classics. The biggest disparity was at Strade Bianche, where Lotte Kopecky’s winning ride earned her a measly €2,256 relative to Pogačar’s €16,000. It was a similar tale at Paris-Roubaix, where Kopecky was awarded €9,000 less than Van der Poel, and at Liège-Bastogne-Liège, where Grace Brown (FDJ-SUEZ) won €12,500 to Pogačar’s €20,000.

Individual excellence versus consistent performers

It was a smash-and-grab spring for Pogačar, whose victories in Strade Bianche and Liège-Bastogne-Liège and third place at Milan-San Remo gained him €41,000 across just three appearances.

A specialised approach like that wasn't as effective in the women’s peloton due to the reduced prize money, but after a spring in which she failed to finish top 30 in any of the previous Classics, Brown’s win at Liège-Bastogne-Liège Femmes catapulted her up to seventh in the women’s standings.

Placing just one below Brown, in contrast, was Pfeiffer Georgi (dsm-firmenich PostNL) with a cumulative €9,645, who failed to win any of this year’s Classics but did earn significant prize money across Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Ronde van Drenthe, Trofeo Alfredo Binda, Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix Femmes and Amstel Gold Race.