Trek and Lemond - a question from the diaspora

[El Chaba]

Originally Posted by Sarhog

IMHO, if you’re buying a bike for the purpose of riding it (and enjoying said ride), choosing a bike based on company history or “lore” would be foolish.

I don’t know…That is exactly the criteria for my getting an Alex Singer.

[54ny77]

trek makes great bikes and my first serious road bike was a trek steel back in the dinosaur era. i occasionally poke around for a pink 770 with super record in my size, but haven't found that unicorn.

that said, after how they f'd over lemond, i will not own a trek. that's on the ceo and management.

plenty of other great bikes to go 'round.

and ps i've owned a lemond in the past, and it was great (steel zurich).

[mhespenheide]

Originally Posted by Sarhog

IMHO, if you’re buying a bike for the purpose of riding it (and enjoying said ride), choosing a bike based on company history or “lore” would be foolish.

And if a company history or lore influences your enjoyment? It might not for you, but it might for others.

[giordana93]

Originally Posted by Gummee

Icon was good stuff before they sold out. Lightweight. Strong.

Ditto with Syncros before they sold. I still have a few Sycros seatposts and stems in the garage

M

to avoid any confusion, wanted to point out that Syncros is a Scott brand still to this day

[ridethecliche]

I'm curious what brands folks have moved onto if they say that they used to be a fan of trek back in the day but then lost interest even more so after LA and the mistreatment of GL.

I say this because I have a feeling that that folks aren't moving from Trek/Spec/etc to brands like giant/fuji/scott... but to more boutique or esoteric stuff. I think that kind of negates the argument somewhat.

That said, some of my favorite bikes that I've owned were treks, specifically a 1984 Trek 760 and 520. They were both older than I was.

If I were to claim 'allegiance' to any particular brand, it would likely be Cannondale and that's mostly because I used to race one in college because they had the best crash replacement policy and then I joined a team that was sponsored by a shop that sold them. It was also super cool to be able to afford a made in USA CAAD9 as a college student and have the same frame as what was being ridden by pros... which was totally unattainable with the other brands. Then again, this was at a time when a 5k bike came with zipps...

[kiwisimon]

Originally Posted by tdh

the point of my original question. I gather that the majority of the forum members don't really care about cycling history and lore when choosing a bike ..

Some do, in fact I'd say most do*. Just LA and Trek sends people into their respective corners very quickly and they come out swinging.

*If not when why does every bike brand home page emphasise their history or bona fides.

[peanutgallery]

Funny thing, Trek isn't exactly an anonymous monolith owned by a bunch of folks who summer in the Hamptons. It's privately held and run by a family...that makes their decisions and what not decidedly more personal...especially when it comes to the whole Minus Seven/Greg L thing

Sure, business is business - but big business is something else entirely. Trek isn't that, it's run on a certain someone's personality. John Burke has no keeper

Originally Posted by Mark McM

This is not just what large corporations want to do, in our economic system this is what publicly traded companies are actually required to do. Corporate executives are accountable to the stockholders to generate profits and value. If they put their own personal moral compasses above the generation of profits, then they aren't doing their jobs (assuming they aren't actually breaking any laws).





That's not quite right what Trek's stance was. If a person not associated with Trek speaks the truth and says that Trek's guy cheats, and Trek losses money because of what that person said, that person is not liable to Trek. But in this case, the person speaking up was in the employ to Trek, and contractually obligated not to say anything bad about Trek or any of their people. In that regard, Lemond breached his contract, and could be on the hook for damages caused by his breach. In the case of whistle blowers, they can generally not be held to confidentiality contracts in the case that they speak out about actions that harm the public good. But that doesn't really apply here, because: 1) Lemond spoke out without actual knowledge of Armstrong's doping; and 2) even if Lemond did have direct knowledge of Armstrong's doping, it could be difficult to establish that cyclist doping causes harm to the public good.

[Mark McM]

Originally Posted by peanutgallery

Funny thing, Trek isn't exactly an anonymous monolith owned by a bunch of folks who summer in the Hamptons. It's privately held and run by a family...that makes their decisions and what not decidedly more personal...especially when it comes to the whole Minus Seven/Greg L thing

Sure, business is business - but big business is something else entirely. Trek isn't that, it's run on a certain someone's personality. John Burke has no keeper

Yes, this is a good point. Privately owned businesses can whatever the owners want - good or bad (as long as they stay within the law, of course). Of the two largest bicycle brands based in the US, Trek is a private company, and Specialized is effectively private (founder Mike Sinyard owns 51% of the Specialized).

[benb]

Sure behavior of the company influences us all.

But there are different levels of behavior. There is how the company behaves towards customers on one end, and how it behaves with respect to the dog and pony show of pro cycling and endorsees on the other hand.

Personally how the company interacts with me, and how their sales/service network behaves is just a much bigger priority.

I get more upset in the concrete by an annoying mechanic or a parts shortage if I need to take a Trek in for something proprietary than I do about anything to do with pro sponsorships. The pro cycling stuff is a much more abstract influence.

Like Specialized cutting off all their instagram endorsees last year? Definitely not going to give me much pause if I was considering buying a Specialized.

[bob_in_pa]

My problem is Trek's doubling down. Companies the size of Trek should spend their money on lawyers to keep them out of financial trouble, not get them out of it by all means necessary once they realize they've made a mistake.

What I mean by that is they should have asked the question "what happens if he turns out to be a cheat and we lose money because of it" before signing the contract. Not "who can we go after now that the world thinks he's cheat and we've lost a bunch of money". It's a matter of not owning your bad decisions.

When I see this kind of behavior it makes me question the leadership and culture of the company and wonder how they're going to try to weasel out of a warranty claim if I ever have to make one.

-Bob

[Nomadmax]

Trek can't go out of business soon enough for me.

[Mark McM]

Originally Posted by bob_in_pa

My problem is Trek's doubling down. Companies the size of Trek should spend their money on lawyers to keep them out of financial trouble, not get them out of it by all means necessary once they realize they've made a mistake.

What I mean by that is they should have asked the question "what happens if he turns out to be a cheat and we lose money because of it" before signing the contract. Not "who can we go after now that the world thinks he's cheat and we've lost a bunch of money". It's a matter of not owning your bad decisions.

The problem here is that when Lemond leveled his allegations, he had no proof of Armstrong's doping, and indeed Armstrong was not officially established as having doped until the USADA's Reasoned Decision in 2012 (4 years after Lemond and Trek settled out of court). An interesting bit of trivia is that USADA investigated and sanctioned Armstrong under the leadership of Travis Taggart. But in 2006, when SCA Promotions tried to get out of paying a bonus to Armstrong for winning the Tour de France claiming that he had committed fraud by doping, one of pieces of evidence that Armstrong presented in his arbitration hearing was an affidavit from Travis Taggart (then general counsel for USADA) saying that the USADA had no evidence that he had doped.

[fogrider]

It comes down to what do we value. If one wants a life time warranty, pay the lowest price and get the most bang for the dollar, Trek ticks all the boxes. Many here likes to support locate builders and don't care about sponsorship.

[peanutgallery]

This just in...Minus Seven suffers from guilt...mistakes it for PTSD. Cures himself thru sheer will in 1 week

https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/16/sport...ntl/index.html

Originally Posted by Mark McM

The problem here is that when Lemond leveled his allegations, he had no proof of Armstrong's doping, and indeed Armstrong was not officially established as having doped until the USADA's Reasoned Decision in 2012 (4 years after Lemond and Trek settled out of court). An interesting bit of trivia is that USADA investigated and sanctioned Armstrong under the leadership of Travis Taggart. But in 2006, when SCA Promotions tried to get out of paying a bonus to Armstrong for winning the Tour de France claiming that he had committed fraud by doping, one of pieces of evidence that Armstrong presented in his arbitration hearing was an affidavit from Travis Taggart (then general counsel for USADA) saying that the USADA had no evidence that he had doped.

[tdh]

Originally Posted by Mark McM

The problem here is that when Lemond leveled his allegations, he had no proof of Armstrong's doping, and indeed Armstrong was not officially established as having doped until the USADA's Reasoned Decision in 2012 (4 years after Lemond and Trek settled out of court). An interesting bit of trivia is that USADA investigated and sanctioned Armstrong under the leadership of Travis Taggart. But in 2006, when SCA Promotions tried to get out of paying a bonus to Armstrong for winning the Tour de France claiming that he had committed fraud by doping, one of pieces of evidence that Armstrong presented in his arbitration hearing was an affidavit from Travis Taggart (then general counsel for USADA) saying that the USADA had no evidence that he had doped.

David Walsh, author and sportswriter on the Sunday Times: "I wrote four books about the guy. All the evidence was out there since 2004 and people will still say there is no evidence. To me there was a wilful conspiracy on the part of sporting officials, journalists, broadcasters, everybody. Now we see the fruits of it: high-level cycling has been destroyed by corruption."

Aspetar Sports Medicine Journal / David Mottram: "At the 2001 Tour of Switzerland, the Director of the Lausanne WADA-accredited anti-doping laboratory reported to USADA that the laboratory had detected a number of samples in the tour that were suspicious for the presence of EPO. Furthermore, USADA were informed by the Director that on reporting these results to UCI, he had been told that at least one of these samples belonged to Lance Armstrong but that there was no way Armstrong was using EPO."

I would argue that the evidence was there all along but people decided to suppress it, as Mr. Walsh says. Regarding Travis Taggart: the most charitable interpretation of his actions would be that he was ill informed.

But I wasn't interested so much in the legal aspects but rather the implications for the cycling culture...I asked my initial question because when I watched the Roadman interview with Greg Lemond, Messrs Lemond and Walsh both, failed to remember the name of Christophe Bassons, the rider who was relentlessly bullied by Armstrong for his firm anti-doping stance. (I include myself here, as I had to google the name, too) It felt odd that we even forget the names of the good guys from those dark doping days. After all, careers were destroyed, people's livelihoods were taken away etc. I used to be a customer of Sepp Fuchs in his shop in Zurich back in the 90s and I always wondered how he felt that he didn't get to enjoy the greatest moment in his career, winning Liege-Bastogne-Liege, because he was declared the winner only a week later after van der Velde was disqualified for doping. We seem to be extremely forgiving when it comes to people and corporations who were part of that entire industrial-institutional complex that screwed guys over. And the charitable attitude seems to include companies like trek. Which I think is kinda odd; after all this is not a business for us but a passion.