Yesterday, the new creation from Trek was premiered in the first stage of the Critérium du Dauphiné, as we had previously announced when its existence was known, and it did so in the best possible way, with a resounding victory by former world champion Mads Pedersen in the sprint that resolved the opening day of the French race.
Madone or Émonda? What is the new bike being used by the Lidl-Trek cyclists?
After seeing the few photos that had been leaked of Trek's new creation, most of us were betting that we were facing a new Trek Émonda, the lightweight and climbing bike from Trek that, at first glance, took a step towards improving aerodynamic qualities in the current trend of all competition bikes, inheriting the most distinctive feature of the Trek Madone, launched two years ago, such as the IsoFlow seat tube design.
For this reason, having only been on the market for two years, logic indicated that it was Émonda's turn for renewal, whose current version dates back to 2020, at the limit of the life cycle that is more or less common in many bikes on the market. However, after seeing it in more detail at Dauphiné, doubts are beginning to arise, starting with the designation that appears on its top tube where the names Madone and Émonda are intertwined, further increasing the confusion.
That it is a fast and aerodynamic bike is evident, at least as demonstrated by the resounding victory achieved by Mads Pedersen in a sprint that took place at a lightning speed and with the last kilometers of the stage where GPS and the markers on the motorcycles seen in the television broadcast were approaching moments of 100 km/h.
It may be a maneuver to create hype by Trek, but it could also be the step to unify models, as its great rival Specialized has done by removing the Venge model from its catalog to enhance the Tarmac as the only bike as aerodynamic as lightweight and climbing. If Trek were to do the same, the most logical thing would be to keep the Madone name, in fact, it was this model that placed Trek in the Olympus of road bikes, acquiring the name of the port near Nice that Lance Armstrong used for his tests.
A bike that, curiously, in its day was a classic climbing bike and that, with the passing of seasons and the greater importance of wind penetration, has been evolving towards an aerodynamic model, increasingly aggressive in these characteristics. If the new Trek bike were to acquire this designation, it would represent a significant step back, with the permission of the technical innovations accumulated during these years towards a profile of a lightweight bike without losing the qualities achieved over the years.
In any case, what is confirmed is that this new bike is a purebred aerolight, with much more streamlined tubes than the current Madone and with an IsoFlow that seems to be a revision of its current aero bike and that, surely, will be confirmed when officially presented, improving the performance of the current one. A bike in which it also stands out that the front half seems to pay much more attention to aerodynamics, something that, on the other hand, is not surprising since it has become a trend in brands when designing a bike with aerodynamic qualities.
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