The Vuelta winner is currently signed to UAE Team ADQ through 2027, but a clause in her contract could see her move teams next year.
Blasi with teammates after she won the Amstel Gold Race
Cor Vos
Ahead of the 2025 season, the women’s transfer market went wild. Between the transfers of Demi Vollering, Marlen Reusser, and Elisa Longo Borghini, to name a few, and the return of both Anna van der Breggen and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, the peloton in 2025 was nearly unrecognizable.
It’s now May 2026, but the 2027 season already looms for agents scrambling to get riders signed before the two big tours, the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. A month ago, the biggest name possibly on the move was Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney, who is rumoured to be leaving Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto after nine years, but a new name has popped up on the radar of teams looking to strengthen their general classification contingents: Paula Blasi.
It only took six weeks for Blasi to become the hottest rider on the market. A surprise win at the Amstel Gold Race, followed by third at La Flèche Wallonne and fifth at Liège-Bastogne-Liège, would have been plenty for UAE Team ADQ to feel smug about their discovery of the youngster back in 2025, but her win at La Vuelta flipped that joy into panic.
The problem for UAE Team ADQ is that Blasi’s contract includes an early buy-out clause. A team needs to pay “only” €100,000 to acquire the newest superstar in women’s cycling. Never mind that six years ago, €100,000 was the salary of the top riders in the sport; these days, a team hurting as much as Lidl-Trek or Movistar would be happy to shell out if it meant they could be in the mix of the Tour de France Femmes in 2027.
Reports suggest Blasi’s current team has offered her a more desirable contract through 2029.
As the conversation of her possible departure hasn’t subsided, that clearly hasn’t quite convinced her agents at Agency A&J All Sports. A source close to Blasi claimed that the 23-year-old signed for UAE Team ADQ in 2025 for close to the WorldTour minimum of roughly €40,000.
In only her second year in the WorldTour peloton, having only officially stepped up from the UAE development team to their WorldTour outfit in May last year, Blasi could go from making near the minimum to €800,000-€850,000, putting her in the top 6 best-paid riders in the peloton.
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