How Trek leads equity in women’s pro cycling

Pioneering equity in women’s professional cycling 

Like most sports, road racing has traditionally been for men. It’s not that we had ‘men’s road racing’ and ‘women’s road racing’ and the men got most of the resources. For a long time, it was just ‘road racing’ – and women weren’t a part of it. 

Even as women’s racing started to take off, it was not televised. And no TV means no sponsors. No sponsors means no money. No money means no good races, no exposure, no women heroes and no need to televise. It was a cycle of stagnation. Or the stagnation of tradition. And Trek was just as culpable as everyone else. 

Before we owned a race team, it was easy to ignore the glaring gender disparity in the sport. We were just sponsors. Not our fault, not our responsibility. But once we owned a team, suddenly we had the opportunity to make a real difference. And we started to ask ourselves the important questions: Why don’t we have a women’s team? Why do they get paid less for everything? What’s the right thing to do here? Sometimes you only need to remove one brick from the dam and the whole thing comes crashing down.

In 2017, Trek hosted the first UCI Cyclocross World Cup to offer equal prize money to men and women. In 2019, we became the first brand to own a professional women’s road team. And in 2021, it was revealed that Trek had been quietly matching the prize money for female athletes at races where they were being paid less than the men. 

Soon, other teams followed suit. And race promoters did, too. The pressure to host women’s races that were on par with the men’s rose substantially. And it made for some damn good racing. And good racing means good heroes. Good heroes mean good stories. Good stories mean good TV and good TV means sponsorship deals. 

Even as the rest of the bike industry has wised up to the importance of investing in women, Trek remains a leader. Lidl-Trek boasts the largest roster in road cycling’s Women’s World Tour and gives the men’s and women’s teams equal support, which is still an uncommon practice in the sport. The company also supports athletes before, during and after pregnancies. 

The results speak for themselves. Trek female athletes have racked up history-making victories, Olympic gold, multiple world championships, world records and so much more.  

But perhaps what’s even more important is the realisation that doing the right thing can have a kind of snowball effect. It puts a spotlight on reality, which forces people to think differently about circumstances they’ve always accepted and take action to correct them.