Contract season
The anxious art of ensuring you have a job.
It creeps in every August.
The summer still feels in full swing, but the tone in Girona changes a touch. Coffee shop chatter shifts from race calendars to “what are you doing next year?”
It’s an innocent-sounding question, but it’s simple code for: Have you got a contract next season?
I’ve lived in Girona for five years now, and every summer there’s this distinct shift. It doesn’t matter if you’re male, female, U23, road or off-road, contract season is real. There’s no real rhyme or rhythm to when something gets signed. If you’re in demand, you can have contracts tied up by late spring. If you’re not, well, it takes as long as it takes.
I’ve seen it all. I arrived bright-eyed and bushy-tailed with a dream. I’ve been that guy who didn’t get a job, I’ve been that guy who moved to gravel, and I’ve also lived with guys who have signed the World Tour contract.
Welcome to contract season.
Road: a team’s market
It’s not a great transfer market for road riders. On both male and female sides, teams are falling away. There’s a question mark next to Arkéa and TotalEnergies, Ceratizit are folding, and who knows how the supposed Intermarché-Lotto merger will end?
If the buyers are WorldTour teams, the sellers (the riders) are competing in an oversaturated, high-skill labour pool. It’s without doubt a buyer’s market.
We hear each year about how the level at the top is getting higher, how the development teams are producing younger and faster riders. But, there’s still the same number of jobs at the top each year. For every new rider coming in, another has been pushed out.
The polarisation of cycling budgets is a story for another day, but it’s very much the case in salaries too. The top riders are getting much richer, and seven-figure contracts are becoming more normal.
There’s a dance that happens when you hear that a certain rider is retiring, or switching teams, or maybe that a new sponsor is bringing money. You send an email, you ask a friend to put a word in. If that all goes well, then there are the calls. If I had a dollar for every time I heard that Rider X had a call with Team Y, I could start a pro team.
If rumours were contracts, Girona would be full of millionaires.
The world of pro cycling has taught me that a phone call, no matter how positive, is worth jack-shit until there’s a signed contract in hand. Pro cycling has made me a very shrewd, very cynical person on the contracts front.
Oh, and whether it’s three in the afternoon or three in the morning, you find yourself refreshing your inbox, just in case. Because all team managers are sending job offers in the middle of the night, right? Right.
Side note: the WorldTour is more performance-driven than ever before. Everyone is focused on UCI points. Gone are the days when riders are signed for social media or other reasons.
Gravel: the wild west
If the WorldTour is a rigid marketplace, then gravel remains the wild west.
It doesn’t follow the same cycle as road contracts, and it’s not as binary. There are only so many jobs in the WorldTour; in gravel, it’s fluid. I have a hunch we’re about to head into the gravel team era - whether that’s 2026 or 2027 remains to be seen - but teams will come.
For now, privateering - riders having personal sponsors - is both simpler and more complicated when it comes to contracts. You need to hit the obvious categories: bike, kit, components, wheels. After that, the world’s your oyster. You can approach non-endemic brands, decide where you want to race, and partially dictate which markets you play in.
Last year, I signed almost all my contracts in November. Yes, I was stressed, heading into the off-season, not knowing if I had a job, but I’m a great believer in “it’ll all figure itself out”.
One day that’ll bite me in the arse.
What happens when it’s over?
The thing with contract season is that just as quickly as it arrives, it’s over again. Everyone disappears for the off-season, and by the time they’re back training, the gossip moves on.
But you notice the absences.
Every year, a few people never come back. For some, it’s by choice. They lived their dream of chasing pro-bikes, and now it’s time to go home to focus on something new. For others, it’s forced, a contract not renewed, or being flicked by a handshake agreement.
I try to keep in touch with those mates who moved back home, but life gets in the way. They’re living their new life, I’m still chasing mine. And every year, new faces arrive to take their place.
Strip away the negotiations, the budgets, the followers and the results, and what’s left are people, friends, training partners, coffee mates.
When they go, they rarely return.
But they leave a gap in this silly circus we call pro racing.
While you’re here…
I’ve added a paid subscription and a ‘Buy Me A Coffee’ link to this post. As the year progresses, I’m planning on building this blog and putting out articles which I’ve always wanted to write but, for whatever reason, haven’t wanted to pitch. Your contributions allow me to do that.
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/joelaverick
The following brands are racing partners of mine, which allow me to do cool stuff.
Big like. I was just thinking about this today, about teams and how I could keep road racing but also mix in some other events (Unbound sounds super cool). Then, of course, I went and refreshed my inbox…