New Trek Madone kills off lightweight Émonda

Cyclist
New Trek Madone kills off lightweight Émonda

The new Trek Madone aero bike is claimed to be just as fast (with proprietary bottles installed) as its predecessor but considerably lighter, with full builds starting from 7kg. As such, Trek has killed off its Émonda climber’s bike, meaning the brand now echoes Specialized by going back to offering a single all-round race bike solution.

A new composite blend, dubbed OCLV 900, together with new fabrication techniques are said to contribute to the Madone’s weight loss, as do new, slimmer tubes.

Trek calls the Madone’s collection of tube profiles its ‘Full System Foil’ design, as they are designed to influence airflow over the bike and rider both upstream and downstream.

The Isoflow hole is smaller but still there, and the seat post above it has been reshaped to produce 80% more compliance.

Sizing has been consolidated, with the range slimming from eight discreet frames down to six, but Trek says the bikes actually fit a greater range of riders than before. Perhaps due to the less costly tooling involved in making fewer sizes, cost is down around £2000 per build compared to the previous Madone SLR. Both SLR and SL tiers are available immediately, with prices ranging from £3,250 / $3,499 / €3,499 to £12,500 / $13,499 / €13,999.

Aero vs lightweight vs all-rounder: which is the fastest road bike?

The complete history of the Trek Madone

Trek Madone SLR 9 Disc: In-depth review

Best lightweight road bikes reviewed

Best aero bikes 2024: Ride faster for less effort

An unexpected development

Among a flurry of new bike launches ahead of this year’s Tour de France – there’s been a Pinarello Dogma F and the Wilier Verticale SLR, and there might be a Canyon Aeroad coming soon too – a revision of Trek’s Madone go-fast bike was one of the more surprising. There have been spy shots surfacing since January of a new Trek race bike, but since the seventh generation Madone has only been out two years it was assumed the model under wraps was a new Émonda. It was in fact new Madone, but it turns out the incorrect assumption was not an unreasonable one, as the project did start out as an Émonda redesign.

‘The Madone’s Isoflow concept [a frame tube arrangement that combines a cantilevered seat post and a hole in the seat tube to help both comfort and aerodynamics] has been so well-received that we wanted to see if we could apply it to our Émonda platform,’ says Jordan Roessingh, Trek’s director of road bikes. ‘However, going a little way further down that developmental path showed us its full potential, and around halfway through the Émonda revision we got confident that we could get the best of both worlds in one bike.’

As such, Émonda generation four turned into Madone generation eight, with the latter consuming the former: just as Specialized did with its Tarmac SL7 in 2021, Trek now has one all-round race bike solution once again.

‘The motivation has been there for this to be the case for a long time,’ says Roessingh. ‘As our aero bike got lighter and our climber’s bike got faster, our pros have been increasingly unsure over which bike is right to use when. Things have just got very simple, because the new Madone is as fast as the old one, but at the previous Émonda’s weight.’

Fast gets fit

Roessingh says that shedding over 320g versus the previous Trek Madone frameset was in part due to a new composite blend the new model debuts, plus how that composite blend was fabricated.

‘OCLV 900 is 20% stronger than OCLV 800, which allowed us to use less material overall,’ says John Davis, the Madone’s lead aerodynamicist. ‘Plus we’ve used different manufacturing processes, such as an inflatable mandrels, that improve compaction. This reduces excess resin and wrinkles in the carbon that would otherwise add weight.’

Equally, little is more effective at shedding weight than just making things smaller. The tube profiles on the new Madone are distinctly slimmer in profile.

‘The frameset cross sections are a result of updated simulation methods, which get better all the time,’ says Davis. ‘They’re able to account for more and more variables, plus how different areas interact with each other and the rider, both upstream and downstream, so the tubes have been designed as such. We’ve dubbed them “Full System Foil” shapes, as the tubes in isolation may seem slimmer, but together with the rider they are just as aero.’

Davis references a cross-sectional slice just above the bottom bracket as an example. From a bird’s eye view working front to back, the front wheel rim, tyre, down tube, first bottle, second bottle, seat tube, rear wheel tyre and rim all form a fairly complete aerofoil shape. The bottles are specifically designed for the new Madone, though the cages accept regular bottles too.

Thick up front, narrow out back

There’s further evidence of this cohesive aero picture at the cockpit. Its narrow, flared dimensions promote a similarly aero body position like the last Trek Madone, but the cross section of the tops is actually thicker and, in isolation, slower than before.

‘The new top profile – which we dubbed “chonky” internally – slows the air hitting the rider’s legs, which are the draggiest part of the system, meaning as a complete package drag is actually lower as there’s a less dramatic change in airspeed,’ says Davis.

That said, the low-pressure wake is still there behind the rider, acting as an anchor pulling them backwards. That’s why the Isoflow hole, together with narrow and aerofoil-shaped seat tube and seatays are there.

Trek Madone isoflow frame feature — Trek

‘That collection of features lets air flow past the back of the bike easily, re-energising that area to lessen wake drag,’ says Davis.

Airflow is only part of the Isoflow feature’s puzzle though, as the cantilevered seat post it creates is key in the bike’s ride quality. Trek says updated profiling on the new Madone introduces an 80% improvement in compliance, and ride quality is likely to helped further by the now-stock 28mm tyres, in place of the 25mm width that was used on the previous bike. Maximum clearance has been set at 32mm.

Strength in depth

Interestingly for such a mature platform, Trek has had a rethink on the bike’s fit geometry. The size range has gone from eight, designated by nominal numerical measurements (54cm, 56cm), down to six, designated by a system more akin to clothing size (S, M, L).

‘There was some confusion over which size was best for certain riders, so we wanted introduce both less overlap and more clarity,’ says Roessingh. ‘Though there are fewer options, we’ve spread them as such that they cover a wider range of heights than before.’

Riders at the extremes should find more appropriate ride characteristics too, as Trek has tuned frameset profiles specifically for each size, rather than just incrementally scale from most popular M/L (the old 56cm).

‘The smaller frames wouldn’t see the weight decreases they could actually afford to lose, but now the riders that use them won’t be on a comparatively heavy bike,’ says Roessingh.

If it hasn’t been long since the previous Trek Madone SLR came out, it has been an even shorter intermission since the more affordable SL version was released as that only came months after. However, this time round both frameset tiers have been released together.

‘Where the SLR uses OCLV 900, the SL bikes use our OCLV 500 composite blend,’ says Roessingh. ‘The SLR comes with a one-piece cockpit as opposed to a two-piece setup, and the proprietary water bottles come as standard. The SL bike can use mechanical drivetrains, too, but really the only performance difference between the two is in weight.’

The SL might be heavier, but it’s still less than the previous generation SLR though, so it seems even at more affordable levels the new Madone should be one hell of a bike.

Find out more about the new Trek Madone at trek.com

Trek Madone spec

The 2025 Trek Madone is available in a comprehensive eight-bike range, with four specs available at the SLR tier and four at the SL tier. SL 6 Madones and above will come set up tubeless ready, with the user just required to add the supplied sealant. SL bikes will not be available through Trek’s Project One custom program.

The new bike uses SRAM’s UDH hanger standard, a T47 bottom bracket and Trek’s Universal RCS headset system. That uses consistent headset bearing cover and spacers depending on stem type, which should make swapping components between models that use the system easier.

‘All Trek road bikes will have these standards in future to make it easier for the end user,’ says Roessingh.