João Almeida and Rui Costa won similar prizes, but receive very different checks

The best Portuguese players both totaled over 13 thousand euros in the Tour of Spain, but for a “cake” of teams that earned six times more in the UAE Emirates than in the Intermarché-Wanty

By obtaining the first three places overall, with Sepp Kuss, Jonas Vingegaard and Primoz Roglic, and winning five of the 21 stages, Jumbo-Visma totaled 365 thousand euros in prizes in the Tour of Spain, more than triple that of the other best-paid teams , Soudal-Quick Step (99 thousand euros) and UAE Emirates (95.5 thousand). This, within the principle of distributing the prize among nine (eight cyclists and staff), will give checks for 15 thousand euros to João Almeida and Rui Oliveira.

Almeida, best Portuguese overall, in ninth place worth six thousand euros (and third best young person, which earned another two thousand), earned €13,390 individually, practically the same as Rui Costa, who won a stage (11 thousand euros) and totaled €13,160. Poveiro, however, will only receive 2400 euros, after sharing the Intermarché-Wanty cake among the nine. This is because it was Rui Costa who contributed the largest share of the total €2,1745 for the modest Belgian team.

If Jumbo-Visma also dominated in terms of prizes, in Spain it fell short of the 664 thousand euros for winning the Tour de France and just above the 303 thousand euros for the Giro triumph, in which only Roglic was on the podium. This is because the Vuelta, with a total of 1.1 million euros to distribute among cyclists, pays less than the 2.3 million for the Tour and the 1.5 million for the Tour of Italy.

Pocketing 1.33 million in total from the three Grand Tours, Jumbo will give a sum of 148 thousand euros to Sepp Kuss, the only cyclist who ran them all this year. Even so, the North American will receive less than the 173 thousand euros he would be entitled to just by arriving in Madrid in red.

Tour of Spain prize for team

1st Jumbo-Visma (Netherlands), €364,985

2nd Soudal-Quick Step (Belgium), €98,965

3.º UAE Team Emirates (UAE), €95,530

4.º Bahrain-Victorious (Barém), 80 245€

5th BORA-hansgrohe (Germany), €64,680

6th Alpecin-Deceuninck (Belgium), €63,525

7th dsm-firmenich (Netherlands), €44,790

8th Movistar Team (Spain), €38,150

9th INEOS Grenadiers (Great Britain), €35,035

10th Lotto Dstny (Belgium), €33,130

13.º Intermarché-Circus-Wanty (Bel), €21,745

15th Cofidis (France), €18,360