“The star of the future” - Tadej Pogacar’s superagent sets sights on women’s cycling’s first €1m contract as Paula Blasi’s explosion changes the game

Women’s cycling has been moving towards its first million-euro salary for years. Alex Carera now believes Paula Blasi could be the rider who finally takes it there.

That is no small statement. Carera is not just another agent talking up a client. The Italian represents Tadej Pogacar, Jasper Philipsen and Isaac Del Toro among others, giving him a level of influence few figures in cycling can match. Now he has placed Blasi at the centre of what could become the next major financial leap in the women’s peloton.

The timing is what makes the claim so striking. Blasi is not being positioned as a future project with distant potential. After winning the Amstel Gold Race and La Vuelta Femenina in the same spring, the 23-year-old Spaniard has suddenly become one of the most valuable names in women’s cycling. Speaking to The Athletic, Carera made clear where he believes that rise should lead. Asked about his ambition to make Blasi the first female rider to earn €1m per year, he replied: “That is my goal.”

For Carera, the reasoning is simple. “Because she is the star of the future in cycling,” he said.

The significance of Carera’s comments goes beyond one contract negotiation. Blasi is already tied to UAE Team ADQ until the end of 2027, having signed that deal midway through last season. Since then, her value has changed dramatically.

Her Amstel Gold Race victory transformed her status in the Classics. Her overall win at La Vuelta Femenina pushed her into an even bigger category. Across one spring, Blasi proved she could win a major one-day race, handle the demands of a Grand Tour, and compete under the kind of pressure usually reserved for the most established names in the sport.

That matters because the top end of women’s cycling is changing quickly. Demi Vollering’s move to FDJ-SUEZ already showed how aggressively the market is developing, while Lotte Kopecky remains one of the sport’s most valuable and recognisable riders at SD Worx-Protime. Both are believed to be close to the million-euro mark, though the exact salary ceiling in the women’s peloton remains difficult to verify.

Blasi now sits in that wider conversation. The difference is how fast she has arrived there. And this is what gives the story its edge as Carera is not simply arguing that Blasi deserves to be well paid. He is publicly setting a benchmark for what the next generation of women’s cycling stars should be worth.

Blasi’s 2025 results make that argument easier to understand. Alongside her wins at Amstel and La Vuelta Femenina, she finished third at La Fleche Wallonne and fifth at Liege-Bastogne-Liege. That gave her spring campaign real depth. It was not one surprise result followed by silence. It was a sustained arrival at the highest level.

For UAE Team ADQ, that makes Blasi both a prize asset and a long-term challenge. They already have one of the most exciting riders in the peloton under contract, but if her value keeps climbing at this speed, keeping her beyond her current deal could become one of the defining contract stories in the women’s sport.

The “superagent” label fits Carera because his influence goes far beyond routine contract work. In a sport that has traditionally not operated like football, he is one of the closest things cycling has to a genuine market powerbroker.

His client list gives him reach across the biggest storylines in the men’s peloton, with Pogacar the defining rider of his generation and Philipsen among the most successful sprinters in the world. Blasi gives him a stake in one of the biggest stories now developing on the women’s side of the sport.

That is why his €1m target carries weight. It is not an outside prediction. It is a marker laid down by someone who understands how elite riders are valued, how teams compete for future leaders, and how quickly a rider’s commercial worth can shift when results, profile and potential all land at once.

Blasi’s appeal is obvious. She is young, Spanish, already winning at WorldTour level, and still feels as though her ceiling has not been found. For a women’s peloton looking for its next global figureheads, that is a powerful combination.

The current salary picture remains unclear. Vollering is reported to earn slightly under €1m per year at FDJ-SUEZ, while Kopecky is believed to be on a similar level at SD Worx-Protime. Carera’s ambition for Blasi is therefore about more than getting one rider paid. It is about breaking through a symbolic barrier the sport has been edging towards for some time.

Women’s cycling has already changed dramatically in visibility, team investment and competitive depth. The next question is whether the money at the very top can now follow the same curve.

Blasi’s explosion has arrived at exactly the right moment to test that. Carera has made clear where he thinks the market should go next. Now the sport has to decide whether its newest superstar is also the rider who finally changes the price of its future.