An unreleased Trek road bike has been leaked on the Weight Weenies online forum.
Looking like a slimmed-down version of the Madone aero bike, could it be an update to Trek’s lightweight climbing platform, the Émonda?
Alternatively, could Trek be looking to consolidate its range by combining both into a lightweight/aero all-rounder more akin to the all-conquering Specialized Tarmac?
At the time of writing, official details are scant. However, with the Tour Down Under – the opening race of the WorldTour season – just around the corner, more could be revealed soon.
For now, though, let’s take a look at what we can surmise from the leaked image.
IsoFlow for everyone
As ever at the start of a new season, many WorldTour riders are out at team training camps logging thousands of base miles and familiarising themselves with new kit.
This year, it seems Lidl-Trek’s Giulio Ciccone – the mountains classification winner at the 2023 Tour de France – has had the pleasure of testing a new unbranded road racing bike.
Given it’s a title sponsor of Ciccone’s team, we can assume this is a prototype or unreleased Trek road bike.
The bike also appears to be an amalgamation of two of Trek’s current road models, the Madone SLR Gen 7 and the Émonda SLR.
The most distinctive carry-over from the Madone SLR looks to be the IsoFlow seat tube design.
On the Madone SLR, this essentially sees a kite-shaped hole placed in the junction between the seat tube, the top tube and the seatstays.
According to Trek, the IsoFlow design causes the oncoming airflow to accelerate through the hole, reducing the size of the trailing low-pressure wake behind the bike and thereby improving its aerodynamic efficiency.
IsoFlow is also claimed to help improve comfort to a similar degree to Trek’s previous IsoSpeed ‘decoupler’ system (versions of which appear on the Trek Domane SLR endurance bike and on the previous-generation Madone SLR), but with less weight and complication.
Although the leaked image only shows the new bike from a side-on view, the Madone SLR’s distinctive overhanging seatpost is clearly there.
A climber’s bike
Aside from the IsoFlow design, the rest of the frameset appears to be made up of slim truncated aerofoil tubes.
As on the current Émonda SLR, these are typically employed to reduce weight while maintaining a high degree of aerodynamic efficiency.
While the image we have doesn’t make it clear, we’d be surprised if Trek strayed too far from this formula with this latest bike.
Given Giulio Ciccone is testing it, Trek likely wants to ensure one of its best specialist climbers is happy with how it rides.
Like the current Emonda, this unbadged bike looks to use slim, round seatstays.
The seatpost design appears to be a slimmed-down version of that seen on the Madone, however.
Hydraulic brake hoses route underneath the stem and through the upper headset bearing into the frame (there are no gear cables because the bike is equipped with SRAM’s wireless Red eTap AXS groupset), and the bike has a standard two-piece cockpit.
That may simply be due to Ciccone’s own preferences, however, because he typically uses such setups on all of his race bikes.
As with the current Émonda and Madone, it’s possible this new bike will be able to use both integrated and non-integrated cockpits.
After all, while non-integrated cockpits and round tubes may be lightweight and beautiful, they’re not particularly aerodynamic (or, therefore, fast).
So what is it?
Is this a new Émonda or a new Madone (or both), then?
As things stand, it’s not clear.
On the one hand, given the current Trek Émonda is nearly four years old (it was officially unveiled in June 2020), and the current Madone SLR was only unveiled in June 2022, logic would dictate this is a new Émonda.
One that’s learned a few aero tricks from the Madone while maintaining its impressively low weight, perhaps.
On the other hand, considering the new bike appears to take heavy inspiration from both platforms (and therefore differentiates itself from the Madone far less), and the general industry trend towards brands having just one all-rounder race bike platform, this could also be a consolidation of Trek’s road bike line-up.
The lightweight/aero all-rounder road bike has seen a strong resurgence in recent years, with the release of popular and successful bikes such as the Specialized Tarmac SL7 and SL8, as well as the Pinarello Dogma F, Giant Propel, Ridley Falcn RS and Van Rysel RCR.
With the UCI weight limit looking set to remain unchanged for the foreseeable future, could Trek instead be trying to bring its aero race bike down to the magic 6.8kg mark?
Time will tell, of course, but what would such a bike be called in that case? The Madone, naturally.
The Madone has, after all, been Trek’s primary race bike for more than two decades – dating back to the original Trek Madone 5.9 that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named didn’t win the 2003 Tour de France aboard.
If Trek were to revert back to having a single, do-it-all race bike, we suspect it would continue with the Madone name rather than come up with another anagram (Émonda and Domane are, as many will have noticed, anagrams of Madone).
Unless it plans to come up with a new naming convention altogether, of course.
As always, we’ll keep our eyes peeled and our ears to the ground for more information and will update this article when any is available.
