Jens Voigt appointed Trek's 'Ambassador of Awesome'

Jens Voigt has been appointed Ambassador of Awesome by the bicycle brand Trek, which sponsors the team with which he finished his career this year. His role, described as “the least relaxing retirement ever,” will include working with Trek Travel to lead cycling holidays – one of the few things in a highly tongue-in-cheek press release that may be based on fact.

The 43-year-old, who rode the Tour de France a record-equalling 17 times and in September concluded his career by becoming the first man to break the UCI Hour record under new rules brought in earlier this career, is also planning to take up a role as a coach at Trek Factory Racing.

In its press release, which had us checking that we hadn’t somehow missed four-and-bit-months and  fast-forwarded to 1 April, Trek said Voigt’s role would see him undertake “a variety of diverse objectives including crushing the field on the daily lunch ride, yelling motivational catch phrases at staff members, and increasing worker productivity.”

The company also said that he had been appointed “interim VP of corporate geocaching” – the activity, along with heavy metal music, being one of his passions away from cycling.

It said: “In his very short time as geocaching VP, Voigt has already successfully completed caching most of Trek HQ's daily required work supplies such as all of the pens, spare laptop power cords, and paper clips, leading many Trek employees to spend an exorbitant amount of time scouring the Waterloo, WI, campus for what used to be easily accessible in the company's supply closets.”

Trek vice president Joe Vadeboncoeur commented: "We expect to see our average employee's productivity to increase by somewhere between 500-600% when Jens is around.

"Provided they complete their geocaching tasks in a timely manner. Maybe I'm being a little conservative, but we don't want to heap unreasonable expectations on too early," he added.