Riders and support staff reported to have had no wages since before the Vuelta
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Spanish team Xacobeo Galicia (Image credit: Bettini Photo)
The Xacobeo Galicia squad for 2010.(Image credit: Pepe Xagarós)
Pro Continental squad Xacobeo-Galicia(Image credit: Luis Barbosa)
According to a newspaper report in Spain, the members of the Xacobeo-Galicia team have not been paid for over three months. El Correo Galicia says sources close to the team have revealed that the riders and team staff were last paid in the summer and have not received any wages since before the start of the Vuelta a España.
The newspaper reports that this is the second time this season that wages owed to the team’s 16 riders and several support staff have been significantly delayed. In the summer, members of the team threatened to go public if wages weren’t paid.
The UCI retains a bond covering the team’s wages for three months, which should ensure that all members of the staff are paid what they are owed for August, September and October. But El Correo Galicia says that concern is growing within the team about wages owed for November and December.
This latest news comes after Xacobeo’s successful Vuelta campaign was clouded when David García tested positive and a doping investigation was launched into team leader Ezequiel Mosquera, who had won a stage and finished second overall at the Vuelta. Those setbacks contributed to Galicia’s regional government pulling its backing from the team late in the season, leaving most of the riders without any chance of finding a new contract elsewhere.
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Peter Cossins has written about professional cycling since 1993 and is a contributing editor to Procycling. He is the author of The Monuments: The Grit and the Glory of Cycling's Greatest One-Day Races (Bloomsbury, March 2014) and has translated Christophe Bassons' autobiography, A Clean Break (Bloomsbury, July 2014).
