Floyd Landis has been active on the Daily Peleton message boards. The other day he wrote (Armstrong is believed to be involved with this as well):
http://www.dailypelotonforums.com/main/index.php?showtopic=1671&st=35&p=34701
I have the support and sponsors to promote a one day race in June or July of next year for which the prize money will be 1,000,000 dollars for first and another mil split for the next few places. What are your ideas on that. Do you think it is a good start in providing some competition to the grand tours so that they improve things or do you have a reason why it is self serving? Keep in mind that for winning the vuelta you get 30,000 euros, and for winning the tour you receive 400,000 euros.
If they hold this race in July, it overlaps with the tour. Notice what he said about the prize money. A platry 400,000 euros to win a three week bike race versus $1 million (about 800,000 euros) for a one day bike race. Can you believe the winner of the Vuelta (tour of Spain) geta measely 30,000 euros (about $40,000).
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So, will money intice the better teams to skip the Tour for this race?
Before you answer, also consider this passage that Landis wrote the other day:
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http://www.dailypelotonforums.com/main/index.php?showtopic=1671&st=39
I think a lot of you guys overestimate the income of cyclists and also the importance of prize money for a given rider. If I had to estimate what the average rider earns, discounting the top 20 riders in the world, the remaining 500 (more or less) riders who ride for protour teams earn roughly 80 to 90 thousand euros per year. One reason why you all overestimate things is because you assume that teams adhere to the minimum salary, while you don't know things like when I joined the Postal Service team in 2003, even though I was paid 60,000 dollars, Dave Z. was paid 15,000 dollars for the year (his second year on the team by the way). On top of that we paid all of our own medical insurance and many other expenses which you would expect would be paid by the employers.