How Much Do Pro Triathletes Get Paid?
It is a known fact that triathlon prize money is top and tail between the world class athletes, regularly making podiums, and those scraping into the top 30. Triathletes do not necessarily have the financial backing of a sponsor or their country. So how much money do pro triathletes actually make?
For a win in a WTS race an athlete can take away a hefty sum of $18,000, but for 20th place, will see an athlete walk away with just $1,000, any placing after that, will gain you nothing, except some heavy race legs.
A full breakdown of the WTS money can be found here
Glamorous Instagram posts of athletes getting to travel the world training and racing in beautiful countries, but the reality is, that only a very small percentages actually get to live like this.
Only 33 athletes earned middle class wages of 50k and above in 2017. Which means 95% of pros won less than $50,000 each, with 70% earning less than $10,000. This does not even include athletes who race on the circuit who make nothing for the whole year, because it is very unlikely that this is their only job, so in turn would be classed as ‘semi-professional’.
So who is the best in the world? Flora Duffy ($297,703), Daniela Ryf ($219,657), Javier Gomez ($192,600). No surprises there. Javier Gomez and Flora Duffy seem to be the only two athletes to be able to make substantial money at both ITU and long course. A handful of ITU athletes race the occasional long course, and a handful of long-course athletes made a little money at some high profile non-drafting short course races. But otherwise, the athletes stick to their speciality distance.
Twelve more athletes broke $100,000 mark.
Daniela Ryf did become the first athlete to win the lucrative Nasser Bin Hamad Triple Crown series in 2015. Winning the three ironman races in one season, gaining a total of 1 million in prize money from it. This however, is an extremely rare occurence and will probably not happen again anytime soon.
We are now however, beginning to see a change in the world of triathlon, with rival events, coming in to rival the ITU, offering more opportunity to athletes, albeit again only the best in the world, but this does provide an incentive. In 2015 we saw the introduction of the Island House Triathlon, located in the beautiful Highbourne Cay in the Bahamas. A two day race with a total of three events and had a total of 500,000 prize money, with a total of $60,000 going to the winners of both the female and male events each. Another event which has already made a big mark, on the triathlon world, bringing new race format ideas to triathlon, is the Super League Triathlon. This saw the worlds best triathletes compete in the fast and furious event for a total of 1.5 million prize fund.
What does this tell us about prize money in the sport?
Overall, only the very best can enhance the saying ‘winner takes all’. The diverse prize money can be the little extra that drives them, because essentially, they are doing what they love to do anyway.
A list of the top 50 athletes who won the most prize money in 2017 can be seen here
