The ambitious new Wilier-Pirelli Factory Team is born

The just presented Wilier-Pirelli Factory Team is a 100% made in Italy team reborn from the extinct Trek-Pirelli. A team that arrives with the ambitious goal of excelling in XCO and XCM.

New Wilier-Pirelli Factory Team

The Wilier - Pirelli Factory Team continues the great work done in recent years by team manager Marco Trentin, but now comes with new partners and athletes. Bike manufacturer Wilier takes over the material while the team grows to 8 riders including Italian champions Fabian Rabensteiner and Giada Specia, Belgian champion Wout Alleman, as well as Daniel Geismayr, Samuele Porro, Simone Avondetto, Gioele De Cosmo and Janis Baumann.

“The last few seasons for our team have been really exciting - says Team Manager Marco Trenitin - with great results in the international races with young athletes who have grown up together with us and have achieved great success. We got to a point where it was time for us to take another step forward and that step was to become a Factory Team. Thanks to Wilier Triestina we now have this opportunity and with the support of long-time partners such as Pirelli, Tonello and Autovega, the next 3 years will see us pursue important and ambitious goals.

We want to leave our mark and I believe we have all the credentials to do so. In the XCO World Cup we present ourselves with a very young team, but include some of the best future talents; with the Marathon team we are ready to reap the benefits of many years of work and to define ourselves once again as one of the top world teams both in long distance tests of one day and in the most prestigious stage races. We could not be more excited to start this adventure alongside Wilier Triestina. The whole company immediately welcomed us as if we had been part of the family for years. The riders and I can't wait to make them proud".

Wilier Pirelli's first big event will be the upcoming Absa Cape Epic, where the team will ride two pairs and aim for victory. The XCO sector has more medium and long term objectives, which are to get on the World Cup podium and to dream of the Paris Olympics in 2024.

The team's mountain bike will be the Wilier URTA SLR full suspension. The team will use three colours: a standard matt black and two special designs made specifically for national champions Giada Specia and Fabian Rabensteiner (Italy) and Wout Alleman (Belgium).

Andrea Gastaldello, Executive Chairman of Wilier Triestina: ”With the birth of the Wilier Triestina - Pirelli Factory Team we wanted to take a new important step forward in the off-road sector. The goal of increasing our market share and reputation in the MTB sector internationally has been clear for some time: first with the sponsorship of Massimo Debertolis' Wilier 7C Force marathon team - which will continue in 2022 - and then with the launch of increasingly high-level products. In 2021 we presented the ultra-light full suspension URTA SLR, a top- of-the-range product designed and produced for the agonist. A bike that has all the credentials to compete and win both in the marathon and in the cross country. These are the reasons that led us to become the new title partner of Marco Trentin's team, now Wilier Triestina - Pirelli Factory Team. The Factory Team identity is a clear message of how this team will be directly linked to our company, to support the development of new products that, we are sure, will be appreciated by all bikers. We are really confident of what positive can be gathered from such an experience, also because we are in good company. Together with us they have decided to take part in the project of brands with indisputable prestige such as Pirelli, Shimano, Fox, Miche and we are really proud of it. At a sporting level we hope to start immediately with important results with athletes such as Geismayr, Rabensteiner, Del Cosmo, Alleman and Porro in the marathon. In cross country, however, our vision is more in the medium term, having decided to support highly talented young people such as Avondetto, Specia and Baumann. With them we are already thinking about the Paris 2024 Olympics ".

"For Pirelli - says Samuele Bressan, Global Marketing Manager of Pirelli Cycling - the racing platform developed together with Marco Trentin in recent years has been of fundamental importance for the development of the Scorpion range, and for the affirmation of the brand in the MTB racing scene. The results in the races are proof of the value of the project as well as of the technical value of the product, from all points of view: Pirelli has always been devoted to continuous development and does so in all fields, from motorsport to cycling, with the same approach. The confirmation of the support for this team and the new lymph brought by a prestigious brand like Wilier Triestina represent a further springboard, which propels us to Paris 2024 with great ambitions ".