I find it surprising that Horner/others have stated he took a 50% pay cut to go to SD. He must have been making bank at Webcor then, isnt there a minimum salary in a D1 team? Or was that the old rules. IIRC, old D1 had min salary of like 50k and health insurance, or something like that? Anyone know for real?
Surprised to read at CN.com that he sold his house and old clothes and everything and was close to asking out of his contract to go back to the US to support his kids (three!).
How come we have never seen his kids on the podium at one of his million US wins?
Married? Divorced? who watches the kids (CN says he is sole provider for them)?
Not a stalker, just kind of curious now that I read all this. I did not picture him as the guy living out of his car racing bikes selling kit on ebay after all these years killing it in the US.
What is so surprising? he got paid more for being the best here in the USA, and less for being just another good rider (and old too) over there. Horner is one of a handful of dudes making money in US racing, him and Fraser and the guys that win all the time. This is all third hand info, from other people, but I heard he made 180K a year in 2004, excluding prize money which would make it well over 220k a year. something about getting paid from Webcor, some residual payments from the management company that ran Saturn for backing out of a multi-year contract, and some weird deals with getting all of Webcor bikes at the end of the season (which some people swear is just a rumor, and others who should know say is true, so who knows) I know a neo-pro in europe can be paid as little as 22k or something like that, and then after that it goes up a little. So he's probably make 35k, maybe 50k. Vaughters wrote an article in cyclingnews about this stuff too, said support riders were paid under 50k, "good riders" who got top 5's in classic and are young and developing make 180k, and the stars hash that stuff out with lawyers and agents - sky the limit. Peanuts compared to other sports though, and in this country Horner is clearly the exception, like you said, selling primes and old chamois on ebay is many d3 riders real money making profession, I think racing is just to get all the shwag.
another interesting tidbit, back in the day, early 90's, Horner was a bike mechanic who raced cat. 1, he got on Nutra-Fig and Wordin was paying him the princely sum of $500 a month so he could race full time.
I remember as a poor college student at the time thinking - wow, $500 a month just to race your bike, sweet...now it seems funny. That $500 enabled him to train enough to win a a stage of Dupont, and get on a euro team, so Horner worked hiw way up from the lowliest of D3 begginings, so he has earned everything he makes the hard way and it goes to show how these tiny american d3 teams do help riders develop.
