VeloNews | Trek-Volkswagen calls it quits | The Journal of Competitive Cycling.
By Fred Dreier
Posted Jan. 3, 2009

The list of riders who have suited up for the Trek-Volkswagen professional mountain bike team over the years reads like a who’s who of North American off-road racing: Travis Brown, Alison Sydor, Roland Green, Susan Haywood and Jeremiah Bishop, just to name a few. But after 13 years, the Trek-Volkswagen program is calling it quits.

The news comes after Volkswagen declined to renew its contract with the Wisconsin-based bicycle manufacturer.

“The program was heavily contingent on Volkswagen’s buy in,” said Michael Browne, Trek’s brand manager for mountain biking. “The relationship will officially end at the end of the 2008 calendar year.”

Shouldn’t press releases and news articles announcing that something WILL end in the future be made public prior to the actual event that is being announced?

Could I have come up with a more complicated construction for that sentence?

More importantly, however, it is nice to know that Trek values their European-based teams more than their domestic teams, putting several American riders out of work whilst throwing a lot of money at Europeans, Kiwis and Springboks.

“Who would have ever guessed that Trek would pull out of domestic racing?” Haywood said. “I was with the team for 10 years, and it was such a good program built around some really good racers. To see Trek pull the plug with such little fanfare is frustrating. I think it deserves a better goodbye.”

But continuing with a domestic program, Browne said, simply does not fit into Trek’s budget for next year.

If Trek had any integrity, it would fund the team for this season on its own, allowing the riders that have helped make the team and the company a success at least one more year of guaranteed salary while the riders look for new sponsorships for the 2010 season, or the team attempts to to pick-up a mid-season sponsor.

But by delaying the announcement of the demise of the team until late December, many of the affected riders are going to have difficulty finding a team which still has room and budget to pay them what they would have been earning had Trek not gambled with their livelihoods.

Henry James once wrote, “What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?”

Thank you, Trek … thank you for showing your true character as a company.

InBev Mulls Bid for Rival Anheuser - WSJ.com

Anheuser-Busch Cos. [NYSE:BUD] faces a potential assault from beer giant InBev NV and activist investors that threatens to place the 150-year-old American icon in foreign hands.

Leuven, Belgium-based InBev is weighing an unsolicited takeover of the Budweiser maker, people familiar with the brewer’s planning said on Friday. Anheuser-Busch shares jumped 7.66%, to $56.61 on the news, giving the company a market value of $40.4 billion. Trading volume totaled 11 times the daily average.

InBev has yet to make a final decision on whether to pursue an unsolicited offer, an approach that would be fraught with complications, the people said. But now may be the time to strike given how the depreciating dollar makes U.S. corporate assets cheaper for foreign buyers. Behind SABMiller Co., InBev and Anheuser are the world’s second- and third-largest brewers as measured by volume. Together they would control 300 brands on six continents, brewing 10 billion gallons of beer each year. Both companies declined to comment on deal speculation Friday.

InBev’s designs on Anheuser come as beer makers face pressure to trim costs because of increasing expenses for commodities such as barley, aluminum and glass, making it more important to gain economies of scale. Plans by SABMiller to combine its U.S. operations with Coors Brewing Co., a unit of Molson Coors Brewing Co., have also increased pressure for other brewers to consolidate. Heineken NV and Carlsberg A/S recently clinched a deal to acquire Scottish & Newcastle PLC, the biggest brewer in the United Kingdom.

InBev, which makes Stella Artois and Beck’s, is eager to gain a foothold in the U.S., where it has a tiny presence. The U.S. is the biggest beer market in terms of profits, though sales growth is tepid. The companies have relatively little geographic overlap. InBev has a strong footprint in emerging markets, including Brazil, but is exposed to some slower-growth markets, like Western Europe. By combining, InBev and Anheuser would gain a stronger position in China, where they have both been expanding in recent years. China is the world’s largest beer market by volume.

During my youthful years in Belgium in the early 1980s, Stella Artois was the primary beverage of weekend consumption … other InBev brands of Belgian brews include Jupiler (eh), Hoegaarden, and Leffe (mmmmm….). And what self-respecting cyclist doesn’t like Belgian beer?

InBev also controls a host of other incredible world-wide brands, like Spaten, Skol, Staropramen, Bass, and Murphy’s.

If this takeover attempt means that more good European beers can find their way into the US in general (and Utah in specific), then I say “Bring it, baby!”

The Great Vodka Taste Test

Our man in Moscow samples 11 premium brands in one wild night.

The First Nip

It was time to confront the fear. Thanks to a dare from vanityfair.com, there were 11 bottles of vodka in the freezer. When I nervously took a peek at them, I noticed that the freezers pall of frost had obscured the Cyrillic on their labels in a thick, crystalline haze. I was going to need some help.

The doorbell rang, and I welcomed a few friends into my apartment in a Brezhnev-era high-rise in central Moscow. They had arrived to lend a gullet in taste-testing the new breed of Russia’s premium vodkas. The editorial rationale? In the last several years Russia has seen a remarkable elevation in the status of its national drink, as a slew of premium brands has created an entirely new market for pricey vodka. And Moscow and St. Petersburg, Eastern Europe’s 21st-century capitals of wealth and decadence, are the places where these spirits are consumed with greatest enthusiasm.

This sounds like my kind of party.

Good friends … good booze … as long as there’s a good place to crash and sleep off the effects afterwards.

And I’m still looking for the premium tonics …