Trek spent over $300,000 closing women’s cycling’s prize-money gap. Its CEO says the point is to make the checks obsolete |
Trek spent over $300,000 closing women’s cycling’s prize-money gap. Its CEO says the point is to make the checks obsolete
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.
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........