Trek Sponsorship on the Road

Trek’s participation in cycling is extensive and their unwavering support for women’s riding goes from the grassroots.

Trek help support and sponsor a number of professional and amateur cycling teams and camps across the world, not to mention the world class athletes on their racing teams – most notably Laura Trott.

On the road, Trek’s UK branch have put a strong focus on supporting British teams that work to build pathways into professional cycling for young female riders, namely Matrix Fitness, and brand new for 2016 team Drops Cycling.

Matrix Fitness

In 2015, Trek announced their partnership with women’s cycling team, Matrix Fitness. With professional athletes such as Laura Trott, who transferred from Wiggle Honda, Matrix Fitness Racing Team embarked upon their first year as a UCI professional squad.

This year, the team has pulled back a little, and director Stefan Wyman explained his motives behind sticking with European racing incredibly clearly, telling us: “[By racing in Europe only] we can have a real impact on rider’s careers, provide a more generous package and more input to each rider.”

Discussing the Women’s World Tour with us more recently, he elaborated, highlighting the large gaps in ability between the best and the lowest ranked UCI pro women’s teams and saying: “We need rankings to reflect the quality of the team”.

Rather than applying to race against the best of the best, Matrix will instead provide a talent pathway for riders somewhere between domestic and top level in terms of experience and ability – as Wyman told us: “For a young rider moving up through the rankings, they need to know where they are and where they’re going.”

All team riders are supplied with the very best road bikes from Trek: the Émonda SLR and the Speed Concept for time trial races. Each bike having is developed and tested thoroughly by athletes and engineers, but the relationship is two way and the riders can provide feedback to Trek as well.

The team have yet to officially launch for 2016, but will be holding a special event on April 1 at CycleFit Manchester.

Drops Cycling

Earlier this year, Trek announced its support for the brand new women’s Drops Cycling Team. This UCI registered women’s cycling team are set to take the peloton by storm this season with assistance from the global bike brand.

Riders have been equipped with customised Trek Émonda’s and Trek Madone’s to help them ride to glory this season.

The team, who were officially announced at the London Bike Show early this year, will initially race in the UK and Europe. Many of the riders balance training with day jobs, but the roster includes some formidable names in UK racing – such as Karla Boddy, Laura Massey, ex-World Duathlon champ Sophie Coleman and Lucy Shaw (who raced for Matrix last year!).

The team are being managed by UCI accredited director, Bob Varney, and have already been announced as one of those we can expect to see lining up at the Tour de Yorkshire later this year.

Discussing the new squad, Trek’s PR guru Jez Loftus told us: “The Drop’s team are racing for the right reasons, it’s got a great feel to it. It’s great to support them in such a positive way.”

Trek’s Precision Fit Technology

Having a talented team of athletes, and a range of the best performance bikes on the market is only half the battle. Fitting the bike to the athlete is a challenge in itself.

Both the The Matrix Fitness team and Drops team benefit from the Trek Precision Fit program which accurately fits each rider to their bike. By using motion cameras to track the rider’s movements as they pedal, fitters can get the athlete into the optimum position that blends efficiency with aerodynamics, and of course comfort bearing in mind the long days in the saddle ahead.

Describing her fit last year, Matrix Fitness rider Sara Olsson said: “It was really an intense but interesting and great day and I thank the team of Cyclefit [who carried out the fit] and Trek for an amazing job!

Now I’m getting used to the new position and it’s a big difference from before. Suddenly my feet feel comfy in my shoes and I didn’t even know they didn’t before. I already feel that I’m using some different muscles and am excited to see where this will lead. I’m hopefully going to come out much stronger from this in 2015! I might even ride cobbles well after this, not losing all my powers in the vibrations.”

With every athlete partnered up with their perfectly fitted dream machine, there’s nothing stopping them from reaching the top spot on that podium.