![](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-2219144550-e1777063348402.jpg?w=2048\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
When Trek CEO John Burke talks about women\u2019s cycling, he frames the company\u2019s investment less as a marketing campaign and more of a question of corporate purpose.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the things we do with the bike company is we try and make a difference in the world,\u201d he told Fortune.<\/p>\n
Since its founding in 1976 in Waterloo, Wis., that philosophy has taken a measurable form. It came into full view between 2021 and 2025, when Trek paid out approximately $308,000 (about \u20ac263,000) to match prize money for women cyclists at races where female winners were awarded less than their male counterparts. <\/p>\n
The company\u2019s most pointed example came at the 2021 Paris-Roubaix Femmes, when the women\u2019s winner received \u20ac1,535 (roughly $1,815 in 2018) while the men\u2019s winner received \u20ac30,000 (about $35,490 in 2018).<\/p>\n
Trek covered the difference, and since then, has continued doing so at other races.<\/p>\n
Emma Norsgaard and Elizabeth Deignan of Team Lidl \u2013 Trek.<\/p>\n
Alex Broadway\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
The amount Trek needs to pay out has been decreasing, according to the company, because more race organizers have begun establishing equal prize purses for men and women. That\u2019s in part due to publicity from Trek\u2019s checkwriting and in part due to pressure. Trek\u2019s intervention appears to be doing what it was designed to do: embarrass the old system into changing.<\/p>\n
For Burke, the issue became obvious around 2017, when Trek CFO Chad Brown walked into his office after visiting women\u2019s races in Europe.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe goes, \u2018Do you know what\u2019s going on with women cycling?\u2019\u201d Burke said. \u201cHe said, \u2018I was just over there in Europe, and it\u2019s embarrassing. Most of the women are making less than $10,000 a year. They get secondhand bikes. They stay at s\u2014-y hotels. They\u2019re flown in the night before the race. Nobody cares.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Burke responded like anyone who may own a five-decade-old cycling company and who was outraged by the growing publicity surrounding the U.S. women\u2019s soccer team\u2019s salaries. At that time, they had just won the first of two back-to-back FIFA World Cup titles.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy don\u2019t we just buy a women\u2019s cycling team?\u201d Burke recalled asking Brown. When Trek was unable to buy one, it started its own.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe said we\u2019re going to treat women the same way the men are treated,\u201d Burke said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to pay them livable wages, we\u2019re going to give them the best equipment, we\u2019re going to give them great coaching. We\u2019re going to take really good care of them the same way we take care of men. And nobody was doing this. This was a revolutionary idea.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the riders Trek signed was Lizzie Deignan, who was pregnant at the time and uncertain about her future in the sport, despite being ranked number one worldwide after getting crowned the 2015 world road race champion.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt incredibly grateful to Trek for the opportunity to join the team, because when I announced that I was pregnant, I didn\u2019t know what my future looked like in the sport,\u201d Deignan told Fortune. \u201cDespite being ranked number one in the world at the time, I didn\u2019t have a secure team.\u201d<\/p>\n
What stood out to her, she said, was that Trek did not treat the move as symbolic.<\/p>\n
When women cyclists would win, so would Trek employees.<\/p>\n
Dario Belingheri\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cTrek came in, and there was no tokenism about it,\u201d Deignan said. \u201cThey really came in at the top level and gave me an amazing opportunity. And it was really special to be able to win some really iconic races with Trek on my jersey because of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The equal-prize-money effort, Deignan said, was part of a broader set of initiatives that changed the culture around the team. She recalled being approached by a former Trek employee who told her she had received \u00a350 because of Deignan. The employee explained that when the women won races, Trek employees would get money too.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause of that, it had this ripple effect of momentum and excitement amongst the Trek employees,\u201d Deignan said. \u201cSimple initiatives like that actually built a really strong foundation and fan base, even within the company.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ripple effects<\/p>\n
Because men\u2019s cycling teams have been around for much longer, some folks didn\u2019t know about the logistics or even rules of women\u2019s cycling, and have never had the experience of working closely in the sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cOld-school staff, who\u2019ve been in the sport for years, who\u2019ve never known anything about women\u2019s cycling, knew that actually they had to get on board with this, because Trek were taking it incredibly seriously,\u201d Deignan said. \u201cSo their attitude immediately was about welcoming us and understanding that this was a mutually beneficial relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n
Burke said he wasn\u2019t even responsible for Trek\u2019s prize-money matching program\u2014evidence, he says, of the commitment that had become embedded in the company\u2019s culture. He remembered learning that Trek had hosted a World Cup cyclocross race and offered equal prize money.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were the only event that did that,\u201d Burke said. \u201cI didn\u2019t make that call, but the team did. Great idea.\u201d<\/p>\n
He only learned of Trek topping off prize money at professional races after receiving a note from cyclist Ellen van Dijk.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe goes, \u2018I just want to let you know this is really meaningful, not just in the money, but just in what Trek does,\u2019\u201d Burke said.<\/p>\n
That distinction, between the financial value and the signal it sends, is central to Trek\u2019s argument. Burke said companies often try to quantify the return on purpose-driven investments too narrowly.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo me, you can\u2019t quantify it,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s something about doing the right thing, and there\u2019s something about what do you stand for as a company.\u201d<\/p>\n
Szymon Gruchalski\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Burke rejected the idea that every initiative needs a direct return-on-investment calculation.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the day, when I\u2019m dead and gone, nobody\u2019s going to say, \u2018Well, his return on assets was blank,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cBut they might look back and they said, \u2018Trek took a long-term view, and they tried not only to build the best bikes in the world, but they also tried to make a difference.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Women\u2019s cycling, he added, is one of the areas he is proudest of.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest thing that we do is be an example,\u201d Burke said. \u201cThat\u2019s how we multiply our impact. The impact that Trek\u2019s made on women\u2019s cycling isn\u2019t the Trek team. It\u2019s all of the teams who saw what Trek was doing, and they made big changes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Deignan says those changes are real, but incomplete. Prize money is only one part of the economic gap in women\u2019s cycling. Media coverage, sponsorships, salaries, and the basic ability to train full time still lag behind the men\u2019s side.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are definitely still gaps,\u201d Deignan said. \u201cThis previous weekend, Paris-Roubaix, for instance, the race that I won, there still wasn\u2019t full TV coverage. Although their fans are growing, they still only get to watch 50% of the race, and that only tells half the story.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt always takes, in every sport, the first person to do it,\u201d she said. \u201cI suppose I did similar to that in cycling on a smaller scale, but with the support of Trek from the very beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n
For women cyclists, pay is also directly tied to performance. Deignan said women\u2019s cycling has only had a minimum wage in the last five or six years, and that the change is now beginning to raise the level of competition.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be a professional athlete in every sense of the word is transformative in terms of performance,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s no way that anybody who is managing all those extra things that come with a second job has the capacity to perform at the same level as someone who\u2019s full time.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the end of the day, it was less about Trek doing something to get something in return, and more about the tenacity of being a professional athlete, as Deignan also put it.<\/p>\n
\u201cToo many people are focused on the short term and on what they get,\u201d Burke said. \u201cDoing good things builds a brand over a long period of time.\u201d<\/p>\n
#Trek #spent #closing #womens #cyclings #prizemoney #gap #CEO #gap #change<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Trek CEO John Burke talks about women\u2019s cycling, he frames the company\u2019s investment less…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[245],"tags":[10064,585,1626,2146,5359,10067,3548,10068,1403,2858,455,10065,10066],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4850"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4850\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}