You might say the new eighth-generation Trek Madone is a poorly kept secret. Lidl-Trek’s Mads Pedersen won the first stage of the Critérium du Dauphiné on the Trek Madone Gen 8. Thibau Nys snagged Stage 3 of the Tour de Suisse on the same frame. But now, the new bike has been released officially. The company’s flagship aero bike has received a host of new changes, which are good news for riders (both pro and the rest of us). The launch, however, marks some bad news for another bike in Trek’s lineup, one that shares all the same letters in its name, albeit with an added accent on the e.
Why Trek is revising its road-bike lineup now
Back in September 2021, Trek was working on the fourth-generation of its lightweight road frame, the Émonda. As the team developed the bike, with trips to a wind tunnel and computer modelling, the group saw aerodynamic figures approaching those of Trek’s aero bike. Engineers and designers started exploring the idea of making one bike that had the low mass of the Émonda and aerodynamics of the Madone. It’s something other companies have already done. Specialized retired its aero Venge after the S-Works Tarmac SL7 came out in 2020 with all the necessary wind-slicing abilities on the climber’s bike. Argon 18 began phasing out its Gallium, all-round road bike, and aero Nitrogen after the Montreal company launched the Sum in 2022.
“The concept of a single race bike has been out there for a while and one of the reasons that we haven’t done that previously was it just required too much compromise,” said Jordan Roessingh, director of road bikes at Trek.
With the launch of the Madone Gen 8, Trek says the weight of the aero bike is the same as the Émonda. To be precise, it’s about 5 g heavier. The frame and fork of the size 56 Émonda is 1,141 g. The new Madone frameset in medium large weighs 1,146 g (frame: 796 g; fork: 350 g). (I’ll tell you more about why the old bike is size 56 and the new one is size medium large later.) Since the Madone is so feathery now, the carbon-fibre Émonda will be phased out of the company’s lineup. The aluminum Émonda ALR will stick around.
The aerodynamics of the Madone Gen 8 are essentially the same as the Gen 7 frame. Keeping things the same, however, required a whole bunch of design changes.
On developing the Trek Madone Gen 8
When I asked Alex Loy, lead engineer, and John Davis, aerodynamics lead, about just…
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