Sports Illustrated released their Fortunate 50 list today. This is supposedly a list of the 50 highest paid athletes, so I was surprised to not see Michael Schumacher at or near the top. His annual salary salary of US$35 million alone would put him 6th on the list, plus another $50 million or so in endorsments should put him at the top. Sorry I can’t find a good cite for those salary claims, but those are the numbers that the sporting press generally report.
So why’d they leave him off? I realize that the US media doesn’t give a rat’s ass about racing that doesn’t involve people named Earnhardt or Petty, but leaving a 6-time world champion off the list seems like a major slap in the face.
I haven’t seen the full list, but from the link it looks like it’s US (or N America) only?..either that or drivers don’t count as ‘athletes’ in SI.
The presence of “Little E” Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jeff “Wonderboy” Gordon on the list (13th and 21st, respectively) would seem to challenge that.
I believe the list is intended to be the top 50 American athletes, and not world athletes.
Formula I isn’t an American sport, even though there are Canadian and American races during the season. Americans are quite provincial in attitude when it comes to sports. If it truly isn’t American, it doesn’t exist.
Yep, they must be limiting it to just US sports - it woulda been nice if they had made that clear. Worse would be the possiblity that no one on the SI staff thought of Schumacher…
On the 2003 Forbes celebrity list, He’s the second highest sports figure behind Tiger woods.