Sticking with the theme from yesterday of bike companies supplying bikes to top level riders, Andy Schleck just announced via twitter that he and Frank will be riding Trek's next year. I'm not sure what the rest of their team will be riding, but this is obviously a great move for Trek.
No other bike company in the world, except maybe Cervelo, but on a much smaller scale, has seen their business explode like Trek has, simply because a fan favorite rode their bikes to victory. Trek could either predict the future or got extremely lucky when they landed the Postal Service contract and Lance Armstrong crazed fans around the world all rushed out to ride bikes with the same decal on them.
I would imagine, but I'm obviously just guessing, that Trek's market share declined a bit during Lance's first retirement and would start to fade even more now that his second retirement is much less of a ride off into the sunset sort of fashion. This would leave Trek trying to figure out what team they can provide bikes to that would most likely lead to another craze from fans to ride the same bike as their hero. Sure RadioShack seems to be sticking around for another year, but I also assume that Trek won't be too sad to put some distance between themselves and Johan the wizard of eBay (unconfirmed and not his actual eBay user name).
If I were Trek the obvious and logical answer is the new team without a name from Luxembourg which happens to have every American's new favorite grand tour hope if only because they hate the Spanish guy that was mean and beat their previous hero, Andy Schleck. I don't know what kind of hold Trek has on the Luxembourg bike market, or if there is a Luxembourg bike market, but they certainly like their place in America and since Americans like to look like their heros, I'm sure that Trek hopes that this Contador-is-the-devil and Andy-is-the-savior made up rivalry plays itself out for years. Which, thanks to VeloNews, it probably will and America will sit on the edge of their desk chairs waiting to learn the latest reason to hate Contador and Specialized but love Andy and Trek.
I'm just hoping that Trek's new commercials can compete with the Specialized commercial from this past TdF where Andy Schleck claimed to knock out a bear. While this claim is totally unreasonable since he's the only person on the planet with skinnier arms than me, it makes for riveting advertising. I could barely contain my need to own a Specialized bike as soon as he said that, because I once saw a bear while riding my bike and I'm pretty sure if I'd been on a Specialized I'd have been much less scared and would have simply got off and fought it. If you missed it, the commercial is below. Now, let's all wait and see what Trek comes out with, probably something involving rain and fireflies.
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