They have said they are reducing their SKUs by 40% so would expect some models to be combined or eliminated. I wonder if they will keep the Boone and Crockett going.
Personally as a Tarmac rider I feel like the Madone is the better bike and they should have just said hey if you’re a racer, ride the Madone and eliminated the Emonda but in my area the Emonda is super popular, TCRs are popular globally and they are in my area too but the Emonda is even more popular. Live along the coast with no big long sustained climbs and instead short rollers, especially in the actual races but everyone still buys lightweight climbers like TCRs, Emondas and R2/5 over S5s and Madones (maybe 1 of these for every 10 Emondas).
I have the newer Madone, and I don’t understand why anyone would buy the Emonda over it. The Emonda is a 4 year old design, not particularly light for a ‘climbing’ bike, and not that affordable compared to the likes of Canyon/Giant.
Makes sense for Trek to go the way of Spec and combine the aero/climbing bike especially considering they can get to the UCI weight limit easily in Aero guise.
I’ve owned a Madonne (the one with the flappy brake covers) and a Canyon Aeroad, and I feel for none racers, it feels a bit like turning up at a fist fight with a Abrams M1 battle tank, it might be the best bike for the ride, but turning up to a Club Ride, if you skip a turn, don’t do long turns, you feel that people are going to be looking at you and thinking “All the gear, no idea” and a lot of people just don’t want tha “pressure”, they want to turn up to the club ride, people look at their bike (which they invested in) others look at and go, oh thats nice, but not put expectations on the rider because of the bike they owned, after all TCR’s and Emonda’s just look like normal, but very nice, bikes
I don’t like this as much as my Gen 7, and they’re going to be sneaky with the marketing and claim it’s as fast as previous gen due to that aero bottle setup and new tire. I’m happy to haul around the extra 300 grams for what I think is a much better looking bike.
They say it’s actually compatible with many bikes (RSL Aero bottles coming for $100) will be included with the SLR and can be added to SL. I’m assuming the new bike will be a few watts slower with normal bottles.
Then you can install normal cages and use round bottles…this is going to be more of an issue for the Lidl TREK team taking bottles in a race than for the punter stopping at a store to refill them
I appreciate that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that…but these look great to me (especially that dark red one ).
One benefit of the smaller tubes is it forces Trek to use a smaller logo. It’s practically a meme at this point but the new ones definitely look better than the gen 6 for example.
They did say in the webinar it was originally designed as an Emonda and it def shows, I just like the deeper tubes that this lacks but it’s not bad by any means
I’m with you. I much prefer the previous Madone. This updated version looks pretty bland to me with the skinny tubes. The Madone has been really distinctive and clearly built for all out speed for the last decade but that looks to have changed now.
I guess it’s mostly just the cycle of these things. 5 years ago: “yes, this 8kg bike is still a superbike because aero is what matters”, nowadays: “that 0.5kg weight saving, but draggier frame is much faster. It’s what you really need”
I own a SL8 but my ‘opinion’ is that the current Madone is a faster bike in almost every circumstance, Bicycle Station’s head to head testing seemed to agree with that.
My theory is that the new Madone was actually the new Emonda. They started developing it with the same IsoFlow hole thing and it was just an updated Emonda and they didn’t intend to update the Madone yet. But along the way Trek decided that they needed to cut SKUs and they would rather kill off the Emonda than the Madone since the Madone name is more synonymous as their Race Bike. So they just took the new Emonda and called it the new Madone. The whole Worlds Collide and 1+1=8 all point to them killing off the Emonda now and just having one race bike.
Sunk cost fallacy is going to come back to bite them. The Gen 7 Madone pretty much bombed in the market for whatever reason. Personally with Trek’s current line up, I find it hard to recommend to friends any of their bikes. Domane and Checkpoint are probably their top sellers and there are, IMO, better choices when buying a new bike.
In the last ten years I’ve ridden some nice race bikes: Felt F1 and AR Gen 1 (2014), De Rosa Idol (2016), Scott Foil (2017), Factor 02 (2018), Scott RC 10 (2020), Trek Emonda SLR (2022) and now the Trek Madone Gen 7 AXS 7 (2024). If I had to pick one it would be the Madone due to how comfortable it rides and how it seems to hold speed/perform. Again just curious. Not saying you’re right/wrong. Looking to learn is all.
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