News: Trek World Racing Team Comes Out Firing
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It’s been two long years in the making, but the new Trek World Racing Team is already living up to its promise, starting the World Cup season with a strong showing on all fronts. Tracy Moseley won the women’s DH, both Andrew Neethling and Justin Leov had solid finishes, and all of the XC boys made the top 20.
But though it seems as though they have come out of nowhere, the well-rounded team’s roots go all the way back to 2007, when Martin Whitely and Trek began discussing the potential for putting together a team that could achieve World Cup success on all fronts. Not just a WC gravity squad, or simply a world-class XC team, but rather an all-round mountain bike team—something that hasn’t really been seen since the Volvo-Cannondale era.
Out of this desire was born the Trek World Racing Team: Neethling, Leov, Moseley, Liam Killeen and brothers Mathias and Lukas Flückiger.
After the end of the Lance Armstrong-road era for Trek, the company had wanted to focus more attention on mountain biking. With Whitely’s prodding, Trek then had a timetable for designing and building a World Cup-contending DH rig, as well as world-class XC bikes. All that carbon we’re going to see under Killeen and the Flückiger brothers wasn’t something Trek just pulled out of the bag. Both the Session 88 DH bike and the integrated seatmast steeds the XC racers will ride were designed with one thing in mind: World Cup domination.
The team was officially announced to the media last week, on the eve of last weekend’s World Cup opener in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. In addition to formally announcing the team members, Trek unveiled the new race rigs, which sport a flashy hounds-tooth paint scheme that also appears on the riders’ race kits. The company also highlighted its new World Cup website.
The concept of an all-around mountain bike team is largely the result of Whitely’s desire to break down the barrier that often exists between the gravity set and weight-conscious XC racers. Whitely wanted a team that embraces both ends of the mountain biking spectrum. His racers weren’t chosen merely for their abilities on the bike, but for their genuine appreciation of the sport as a whole.
“At the end of the day,” Killeen said, “we’re all mountain bikers, no matter what we race.”
As for the bikes, the Session 88 is everything it’s been touted to be, according to the racers, and they’re not just spouting the company line.
“It’s so light I can pretty much pick it up (when riding) and put it anywhere, which gives me a tremendous amount of confidence,” Moseley said. “But it’s not just light, it’s handling really well at speed on this (Pietermaritzburg) track. I’m really anxious to see how it will ride at Fort Williams or Mont St Anne.”
For the XC racers, grams still mean everything, and these bikes deliver. The full-suspension top fuels weigh in at 21 pounds with pedals, while the hardtails weigh 19 pounds. And while Killeen’s already learned the value of a full-suspension bike, the Flückiger brothers had never spent time on one. Now the word is that they can hardly be separated from them. That’s not to say that they don’t ride the Elite 9 carbon hardtails, but let’s just say the brothers have a newfound appreciation of how a full-suspension bike can help one reach the top podium step.
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