‘Tell me, you’re standing there at the pearly gates with St Peter looming over you. He asks, “Do you regret anything of your life?” You look sad and answer, “Yes, I have never owned a Trek bike.” Buy one. Buy one…’

The biking behemoth’s marketing team must love Markel Irizar. The 43-year-old former domestique and now DS of Trek-Segafredo’s women’s team is doing a fine sales job as he chaperones Cyclist around the team’s training camp in Denia, Spain.

It’s January, the brief off-season drawing to a close, and we’re here to see how one of the most progressive teams in cycling juggles a successful women’s team and arguably a less-successful men’s team. It’s a tale of complex sessions and maximising resources…

World-class women

Trek-Segafredo was founded in 2011 under the name Leopard-Trek. As per pro cycling’s brittle sponsorship-led business model, the team went by several different monikers until Italian coffee giant Segafredo came on board in 2016. This added financial stability and led to the launch of a women’s team in 2019, which last season notched up 33 wins to finish second behind SD Worx in the Women’s WorldTour rankings.

Dressed in the team’s white and light blue on this fresh January morning, the group represents a who’s who of women’s cycling: Ellen van Dijk, Time-Trial World Champion and Hour record holder; Elisa Balsamo, nine victories last season and Road Race World Champion in 2021; Lucinda Brand, 2022 Tour du Suisse champ and winner of the 2021 Cyclocross Worlds. Also in attendance are Gaia Realini, Shirin van Anrooij and Elynor Bäckstedt, who’s sporting road rash from a downhill masterclass taken by Oscar Saiz earlier in the camp. An ex-pro mountain biker teaching descending skills? It’s progressive if sometimes painful stuff.

Reigning Paris-Roubaix Femmes champ Elisa Longo Borghini was also here but headed off earlier this morning for an altitude camp, while Lizzie Deignan is on maternity leave after giving birth to her second child, Shea, in September. Also bolstering the squad this year are Australians Amanda Spratt and Brodie Chapman, but both are currently at the Tour Down Under.

‘Who are the other riders in the darker blue?’ we ask Irizar, who’s taking a closer look at today’s planned ride on VeloViewer. ‘They’re from the Trek Factory Racing team, our off-road squad,’ he replies.

It’s another star-studded line-up, including Jolanda Neff, winner of mountain biking cross-country gold at the 2020 Olympics, who is chatting away to Britain’s Evie Richards, XCO World Champion in 2021. Ahead of this cosmopolitan pack lies a 107km loop with 1,600m climbing, although this wasn’t always the plan, says Irizar.

‘Today was supposed to be a recovery day but the winds were crazy yesterday so we swapped the sessions over. It’s a bit of a mixed bag because we have the mountain biking girls, the road squad and the likes of Lucinda and Shirin, who are racing the Benidorm Cyclocross World Cup this Sunday [Brand and Van Anrooij would finish fifth and third respectively, the latter on a replacement bike after her Trek Boone was stolen from the parking lot ahead of the race].

But they’ll all cover the same route today, including the long climb up to La Vall d’Ebo, albeit at different intensities. We’ll also do some sprints on the flat where they ride real slow and then power up in the big gear. The high threshold work is preparing them for race season.’

Pro roads

We head west from the team’s hotel, the Denia Marriott La Sella Golf Resort and Spa. The name may be a bit of a mouthful, but the facility is well-appointed and popular with pro cyclists. We stayed here ourselves back in 2020 with the now-disbanded CCC Racing; today the recently relegated Lotto-Dstny men’s team is in residence, as is Ineos Grenadiers’ Tom Pidcock, who we bumped into at breakfast.

‘If you stop at a climb like La Vall d’Ebo or Coll de Rates and stay there for 45 minutes, you’ll probably see 90% of the WorldTour teams,’ Trek-Segafredo rider Jacopo Mosca told us yesterday, and indeed the 29-year-old Italian domestique’s words prove prophetic.

Just as Neff unleashes a ridiculous ascending sprint with her torso nestled just a whisker above her tope tube, riders from Jayco-AlUla, Cofidis, AG2R-Citroën and UAE Team Emirates ride past in the other direction. ‘And who’s the team in grey?’ we ask Irizar. ‘That’s Q36.5. They’re a new ProTeam. They’re Swiss but apparently funded by a South African billionaire.’

The man in question is Ivan Glasenberg, ex-CEO of Glencore, one of the world’s largest mining and commodities trading companies, and the team, explains Irizar, is something of an industry mash-up. Q36.5 refers to the Italian cycling apparel company started by ex-Assos designer Luigi Bergamo, while team manager is Doug Ryder, formerly of Dimension Data.

Vincenzo Nibali has been brought on board as a consultant and the team sheet includes Gianluca Brambilla, who incidentally has just moved from Trek-Segafredo.

‘They have big plans but their name… it’s really rather awkward,’ Irizar says, just as Van Dijk pulls alongside and grabs onto my window frame as we roll along.

‘What’s the plan after La Vall d’Ebo?’ she asks. ‘You can cut it short if you fancy as there’s a harsh block ahead. Save your legs,’ comes the reply.

The pragmatic and focussed Van Dijk appears to crunch some numbers in her head. ‘No, I’ll stick with the long route.’

Spreading of success

As the riders toil outside the car, Irizar and his mechanic Luis Diaz Iriberri are proving genial if philosophical company. ‘Luis gave me a book on leadership,’ says Irizar. ‘The “boss” is the one who says you need to do this, you need to do that. The “leader” is the one who says I have a plan, can you help me please?

‘For me as a DS, I want to win this race. And if you as a soigneur, mechanic, chef and rider want to do the same, we can help each other to achieve it. We can do this if we’re super-committed. That to me is good leadership. All our experienced riders have this quality, and it doesn’t mean shouting and swearing, it means treating people with respect and making sure they’re happy.’

Irizar possesses a joie de vivre that’s infectious, and you can see why he proved a popular domestique in his day, first at Euskaltel-Euskadi from 2004 to 2009, then at Trek up until his retirement in 2019. But his ebullience these days is in stark contrast to a tough childhood in the Basque province of Gipuzkoa.

‘When I was a kid, we had a shit life,’ he says matter-of-factly. ‘My dad was an alcoholic and we had no money. Thankfully, the owner of my local bike shop helped me. He sponsored the first club I raced for as a youngster and always encouraged me. He’s always been a Trek dealer; I remember looking in the window and seeing a Trek bike and praying that I could afford one when I grew up. I can’t believe I not only got a Trek but they paid me to ride it!

‘I now run a cafe called Bizopoz with my wife,’ he continues. ‘It’s in the town of Oñati and the name means “happiness of life”. I guess that’s how I see life. I had testicular cancer in 2002 and I think that shaped my view of life even more. You only live once. Which is why you need to buy a Trek now!’

The ride rolls on, as much a fascinating study in pedalling styles as anything else, with the effortless souplesse of track racer Balsamo contrasting with the mechanical force of mountain biker Richards.

Fuel and finances

The ride reaches its finish back at the hotel and the riders head to their rooms for showers and massages before the post-ride meal conjured up by team chef Bram Lippens.

‘We have fish, spinach soup, pasta and bolognese but, unlike last night, no raw vegetables or heavy red meat,’ he says. ‘Both are slow to digest and both the men and women have really long, intense rides tomorrow, so that wouldn’t be great. I’ll also cook them pancakes and extra rice pudding in the morning because they’ll need their carbohydrates.’

With that, Lippens returns to the hob and we make our way upstairs to catch the men’s team arriving back from their training ride. We spy Mads Pederson first, looking for all the world like he has just been out for a Sunday stroll, rather than returned from 170km of undulating roads around Spain.

Pedersen is arguably the team’s star rider now the likes of Nibali and Richie Porte have retired, with the Dane set to race the Giro d’Italia this year in search of stage wins alongside targeting a selection of cobbled Classics. Can he raise the men’s team beyond their mid-table mediocrity of 2022? Recent history suggests not. Last year the men’s team won 19 times, as they did in 2021. It 2020 that tally was just ten, albeit in a season that was drastically affected by Covid.

New signings include Thibau Nys, the 20-year-old son of former cyclocross megastar Sven Nys, and former Gazprom rider Mathias Vacek, also 20. At this early stage in their careers neither is likely to win big, although their signing does signal the team’s focus on youth, and a month into the season it’s already paying back. As we sit in the Costa Blanca, American Quinn Simmons, just 21, has taken a stage plus tenth overall at the Vuelta a San Juan.

This focus on raw talent is partly by design, but perhaps also partly by necessity, as the men’s team are mooted to have a moderate budget. Quite how much only they know – teams generally don’t reveal their accounts – but ‘moderate’ may mean in the high-teens of millions, and that budget has to stretch to the 14 women and 29 men, as well as the Trek Factory Racing off-road team.

Trek-Segafredo also absorbed further costs by increasing the women’s base salary to match their male counterparts in 2021, ahead of any UCI mandate. The team also famously topped up Lizzie Deignan’s Roubaix-winning purse in 2021 to match the men’s – increasing it to €30,000 from a derisible €1,535. Still, with Trek and Segafredo’s annual turnover a reported £2 billon between them, we’ll refrain from handing out the collection bucket just yet.

‘We might not have the biggest budget but we’ll be competitive this season,’ says Irizar. ‘Yes, the peloton’s growing stronger, but so are we. But success isn’t always measured by victories. This is a great, inclusive team. Trek’s doing more and more for the environment and is leading the way,’ says the man with the marketing glint in his eye. ‘It’s why all of your readers will regret it if they don’t buy a Trek before they die…’

The trailblazer

Trek-Segafredo’s Elisabetta Borgi is the WorldTour’s first full-time psychologist. We caught up with the Italian to see how she ticks

‘I spent ten days with the team at the pre-Christmas camp and one of the key things was working through a questionnaire we’ve created around nine areas of peak performance. Areas include emotional regulation, coping skills, focus, anxiety and self-confidence.

‘There are three common stressors for riders: the performance side, their private lives and the organisational – much of which is down to the leadership and the environment we create. We know we can’t control or prevent everything, but we have a duty to create a strong psychological environment for performance and better mental health.

‘The women are definitely more receptive than men. Once they see you’re reliable they open up and create a full relationship with you. Men, it’s different, although we’re slowly getting there. The female riders are more perfectionists, which is good from one side but it’s easier to tip over the edge. If you look at the research, female athletes suffer more from burnout than men, which matches with their super-high expectations. They also like to feel in control of the situation, and if they feel they lose control – be it through their competitors’ performance or their own – it’s easier for them to drop into a low mood and become more anxious.

‘Basically, the ideal doesn’t look like the real. Why women more than men? I guess it’s like everything – a combination of genetics and society.’