How much do America’s Cup sailors earn? Find out with us: and guess who are the lowest paid…

Bombarded every day with news of the soccer market, megastar salaries of soccer players, and complaints about how little other sportsmen earn compared to them, we have all wondered at least once how much the sailors of the world’s most famous sailing event, the America’s Cup, pocket. Journalist Luca Bontempelli wondered about this, who on his blog traced the salaries of skippers involved in the 34th America’s Cup. Guess a bit who are the lowest paid (figures in millions of dollars annually), according to data provided by Bontempelli? Italians! See the ranking below.

HERE’S HOW MUCH AMERICA’S CUP SKIPPERS EARN PER YEAR

1. Russell Coutts (Oracle Team USA) – $5 million. And so far we might have expected it: Coutts is the CEO of the Oracle Team, and patron Larry Ellison, the fifth richest man in the world, could only reserve for him a rank salary.

2. James Spithill (Oracle Team USA) – $3 million. On the place of honor of the highest paid we find another yachtsman serving the Yankees, Jimmy Spithill, skipper and helmsman of Team Oracle. Surely his salary will have gone up from when he was making us dream on Luna Rossa.

3. Iain Percy (Artemis Racing) – $2.5 million. The three-time Olympic medal-winning Englishman (two and one silver on Finn and Star), who succeeded Cayard as Artemis team manager, takes home a handsome paycheck.

4. Paul Cayard (Artemis Racing) and Grant Dalton (Emirates Team New Zealand)- $2 million. Sailing’s most famous former mustache “settled” for an annual bilion from the Swedes: the same amount pocketed by Team New Zealand manager Grant Dalton.

5. Dean Barker (Emirates Team New Zealand) and Nathan Outteridge (Artemis Racing) – $1.5 million. Different teams, same paycheck for Kiwi Dean Barker, introduced to the Cup world by Russell Coutts in 1995, and Australian Nathan Outteridge, one of Artemis Racing’s helmsmen in the last, for the Swedish team tragic (on the Scandinavian catamaran, Andrew Simpson lost his life), America’s Cup.

6. Max Sirena (Luna Rossa) – $0.2 million. Italians make do with (relatively) little: Luna Rossa skipper Max Sirena, our 2013 Sailor of the Year, had to “settle” for 0.2 million (about 144,000 euros). A high salary in relation to the average of Italian workers and much lower than that of skippers racing in foreign teams.

7. Francesco Bruni (Luna Rossa) – $0.1 million. At the tail end of Bontempelli’s ranking is Checco Bruni, paid 80,000 euros annually by Luna Rossa for the last campaign. Compared to Coutts’ and Spithill’s player salaries, Bruni’s really seems like pocket change. Yet he is an outlier like them.

(photo taken from http://vlog.sailrev.tv/vlog/)