When Trek CEO John Burke talks about women’s cycling, he frames the company’s investment less as a marketing campaign and more of a question of corporate purpose.
“One of the things we do with the bike company is we try and make a difference in the world,” he told Fortune.
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 €263,000) to match prize money for women cyclists at races where female winners were awarded less than their male counterparts.
The company’s most pointed example came at the 2021 Paris-Roubaix Femmes, when the women’s winner received €1,535 (roughly $1,815 in 2018) while the men’s winner received €30,000 (about $35,490 in 2018).
Trek covered the difference, and since then, has continued doing so at other races.
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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’s in part due to publicity from Trek’s checkwriting and in part due to pressure. Trek’s intervention appears to be doing what it was designed to do: embarrass the old system into changing.
For Burke, the issue became obvious around 2017, when Trek CFO Chad Brown walked into his office after visiting women’s races in Europe.
“He goes, ‘Do you know what’s going on with women cycling?’” Burke said. “He said, ‘I was just over there in Europe, and it’s embarrassing. Most of the women are making less than $10,000 a year. They get secondhand bikes. They stay at s—-y hotels. They’re flown in the night before the race. Nobody cares.’”
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’s soccer team’s salaries. At that time, they had just won the first of two back-to-back FIFA World Cup titles.
“Why don’t we just buy a women’s cycling team?” Burke recalled asking Brown. When Trek was unable to buy one, it started its own.
“We said we’re going to treat women the same way the men are treated,” Burke said. “We’re going to pay them livable wages, we’re going to give them the best equipment, we’re going to give them great coaching. We’re 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.”
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.
“I felt incredibly grateful to Trek for the opportunity to join the team, because when I announced that I was pregnant, I didn’t know what my future looked like in the sport,” Deignan told Fortune. “Despite being ranked number one in the world at the time, I didn’t have a secure team.”
What stood out to her, she said, was that Trek did not treat the move as symbolic.
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“Trek came in, and there was no tokenism about it,” Deignan said. “They 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.”
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 £50 because of Deignan. The employee explained that when the women won races, Trek employees would get money too.
“Because of that, it had this ripple effect of momentum and excitement amongst the Trek employees,” Deignan said. “Simple initiatives like that actually built a really strong foundation and fan base, even within the company.”
Ripple effects
Because men’s cycling teams have been around for much longer, some folks didn’t know about the logistics or even rules of women’s cycling, and have never had the experience of working closely in the sport.
“Old-school staff, who’ve been in the sport for years, who’ve never known anything about women’s cycling, knew that actually they had to get on board with this, because Trek were taking it incredibly seriously,” Deignan said. “So their attitude immediately was about welcoming us and understanding that this was a mutually beneficial relationship.”
Burke said he wasn’t even responsible for Trek’s prize-money matching program—evidence, he says, of the commitment that had become embedded in the company’s culture. He remembered learning that Trek had hosted a World Cup cyclocross race and offered equal prize money.
“We were the only event that did that,” Burke said. “I didn’t make that call, but the team did. Great idea.”
He only learned of Trek topping off prize money at professional races after receiving a note from cyclist Ellen van Dijk.
“She goes, ‘I just want to let you know this is really meaningful, not just in the money, but just in what Trek does,’” Burke said.
That distinction, between the financial value and the signal it sends, is central to Trek’s argument. Burke said companies often try to quantify the return on purpose-driven investments too narrowly.
“To me, you can’t quantify it,” he said. “There’s something about doing the right thing, and there’s something about what do you stand for as a company.”
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Burke rejected the idea that every initiative needs a direct return-on-investment calculation.
“At the end of the day, when I’m dead and gone, nobody’s going to say, ‘Well, his return on assets was blank,’” he said. “But they might look back and they said, ‘Trek 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.’”
Women’s cycling, he added, is one of the areas he is proudest of.
“The biggest thing that we do is be an example,” Burke said. “That’s how we multiply our impact. The impact that Trek’s made on women’s cycling isn’t the Trek team. It’s all of the teams who saw what Trek was doing, and they made big changes.”
Deignan says those changes are real, but incomplete. Prize money is only one part of the economic gap in women’s cycling. Media coverage, sponsorships, salaries, and the basic ability to train full time still lag behind the men’s side.
“There are definitely still gaps,” Deignan said. “This previous weekend, Paris-Roubaix, for instance, the race that I won, there still wasn’t 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.”
“It always takes, in every sport, the first person to do it,” she said. “I suppose I did similar to that in cycling on a smaller scale, but with the support of Trek from the very beginning.”
For women cyclists, pay is also directly tied to performance. Deignan said women’s 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.
“To be a professional athlete in every sense of the word is transformative in terms of performance,” she said. “There’s 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’s full time.”
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.
“Too many people are focused on the short term and on what they get,” Burke said. “Doing good things builds a brand over a long period of time.”