Three-time Tour de France winner Greg LeMond once said, ‘It never gets easier, you just go faster.’ It’s a phrase that sprung to mind after I returned from my first outing on the new Trek Madone Gen 8.
This is the bike that has taken the aero benefits of the previous Gen 7 Madone and blended them with the lightweight attributes of the Trek Émonda to create a best-of-all-worlds race machine. I couldn’t wait to try it out on my usual 80km test loop, my assumption being that the bike’s lightness and aero-ness would mean I would barely need to turn the pedals and I would return feeling fresh as a daisy. So when I got back home with the usual aching legs and drenched in sweat, I thought there must be some problem. And then I looked at my time.
I had shaved a few minutes off compared to my previous run on the same loop, an improvement in average speed of around 0.5kmh. OK, it’s not massive, and it was by no means a scientific test – traffic and conditions weren’t identical and there’s every chance I was pushing a bit harder than normal owing to the fact that I was on a £12k race bike in full Lidl-Trek team colours – but the differences were tangible. The new Madone is plainly a fast bike.
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Trek Madone SLR 9 Gen 8: Speed of light
‘The new Madone is as fast as the Gen 7 Madone from an aerodynamics perspective,’ says Jordan Roessingh, director of road bikes at Trek, ‘but it’s 77 seconds per hour faster than the Émonda, so that’s an enormous difference in aerodynamic performance compared to the previous Émonda despite being the same weight. And when you’re comparing the Gen 8 to Gen 7 Madone, it’s the exact same aerodynamic performance but 320g lighter.’
Trek claims the new Madone weighs 7.05kg in size medium/large without cages or bottles, making it a smartphone’s weight shy of hitting the UCI minimum for racing. As such, Trek feels there is no longer the need for a separate aero bike and lightweight bike, so has dropped the Émonda from its lineup. Now that it fulfils both requirements, the Madone rules alone.
The new bike’s significant weight drop has been achieved in two ways: with a new type of carbon fibre that Trek is calling OCLV 900 (up from OCLV 800 in the Gen 7) and with a new set of tube shapes.
‘OCLV 900 uses a material that’s 20% stronger than the highest performing material that we’ve had in the frame before,’ says Roessingh, ‘and there’s a new manufacturing process that ensures there’s no wrinkling on the inside of the tube, so less material is required, and the fork is created in one piece instead of two.’
The tube shapes are noticeably less bulky and less blade-like compared to the Gen 7, again meaning less material for weight saving. But this begs the question how Trek has achieved this without compromising the Madone’s aerodynamics.
‘With the Madone Gen 8, if you put your hand on the down tube it’s flat on the front, which just makes no sense when you think about aerodynamics, as we’re normally told you should have a fast leading edge on it,’ says Roessingh. ‘The way that it works is that it’s part of a system.’
Rather than make each tube of the bike aerodynamic, Trek has aimed to make the whole bike more aero by ensuring the smooth transition of air from the front to the back. The journey of the air from the front edge of the front wheel, past the fork, the rear edge of the front wheel, the down tube, the water bottles, the seat tube, the front of the rear wheel, the seatstays and the back of the rear wheel is treated as a single aerofoil, meaning narrower tubes can contribute to an overall improvement in drag reduction.
Central to this concept are those water bottles. Where normal round bottles would grab at the passing air, Trek’s new flat-shaped Aero bottles encourage it to slip by more smoothly. According to Trek, the Aero bottles provide a 3W aero advantage compared to round bottles, such that if you put round bottles in the Gen 8 cages (they will accept round bottles – something vital for pros using neutral service during races) then the bike is actually slightly slower than the Gen 7 with round bottles. (Interestingly, if you put the Aero bottles in the Gen 7 you wouldn’t gain 3W as it isn’t designed with the same ‘complete system’ profiling as the Gen 8.) Thanks to this system concept, the Madone Gen 8 is actually quicker with the Aero bottles in place than with no bottles at all, so Trek encourages its pro riders to keep hold of both bottles when it comes to the final sprint rather than jettisoning them, as is usually the case.
With cages and bottles in place, I weighed my size large test bike at 7.4kg, still right up there with some of the best lightweight bikes in the peloton.
Trek Madone SLR 9 Gen 8: Size, shapes and stiffness
The IsoFlow concept – the dogleg seat tube section and hole at the rear – has been brought over from the previous Madone. The idea is that it allows the saddle to deflect under impacts to provide more comfort for the rider, although now Trek claims that it is 80% more compliant than before.
‘That’s almost twice the compliance compared to a bike that actually got the podium at Paris-Roubaix,’ says Roessingh, referring to Mads Pedersen’s third place at the 2024 race riding a Madone Gen 7.
That extra flex isn’t mirrored elsewhere in the frame however. In fact Trek claims the new Madone is the stiffest bike it has ever made when it comes to the torsional stiffness in the head tube, down tube and chainstays that helps to translate pedalling power into forward motion. And with that, it completes the set by being able to tick all the boxes of lighter, stiffer, more compliant and more aero.
Then there are the integrated bars, which are aero in themselves but which are also narrower than normal at the hoods, placing the rider in a more aero position and adding another 15W of aero savings over the Émonda, according to Trek.
As for geometry, the new Madone aims to emulate the ride position of the previous Madone, although there are a few slight differences, mainly because Trek has moved from doing eight frame sizes (47cm-62cm) to six, which are now labelled ‘extra-small’ through to ‘extra-large’. This, Trek says, prevents overlap in frame sizes and should make it easier for riders to pick the correct size, with a complimentary build service ensuring the right spacers, stem length, crank length, etc, to get the best fit.
Trek Madone SLR 9 Gen 8 review verdict
As already mentioned, my initial test rides on the Madone Gen 8 revealed it to be a fast bike. It skipped up hills with a nimbleness that flattered my climbing abilities; it cruised at speed on the flats, slicing serenely through the air; it dived into corners with a surefootedness that encouraged me to stay off the brakes for a moment longer than usual. In truth, it was no less than I was expecting for such a race-conditioned bike, but what came as more of a surprise was just how comfortable it was.
The IsoFlow setup really works. Even big hits were met with a noticeable amount of bounce at the rear, while road buzz was significantly reduced to a low-level hum. That ‘80% more compliant’ claim feels like no empty boast, and it has been achieved with none of the weight nor complexity of the previous IsoSpeed decoupler concept.
The same couldn’t be said up the front. The Trek Aero RSL cockpit is as stiff as a brick, and I found my hands getting numb by the end of long rides. Still, the option to spec a different set of bars is available at point of purchase – as are many of the components – so I could always go for something more forgiving if I was spending my own money.
Which brings us to the question: if I had £12k burning a hole in my pocket, would I buy this Trek Madone SLR 9 Gen 8? Well no, not this one. It’s an incredible race bike with head-turning looks (especially in the retina-shredding Lidl-Trek colourway) and if I was Mads Pedersen I would absolutely want this in my arsenal. But for me, the lower tier SL models make more sense.
Made with OCLV 500 carbon instead of 900, the SL range has all the same benefits as the SLR but at around 250g heavier for the frame. And when a 105 Di2-equipped SL 6 model comes in at £4,250, a saving of £7,750 over this test bike (or £12,100 less than the most expensive version), that’s a lot of cash to spend on training camps in Mallorca.
Better still, Trek should transfer its weight-reduction knowhow and IsoFlow design over to its Domane range to create something light, fast and comfortable with a more compliant front end and a slightly less aggressive ride position. Now that’s a bike I would get my wallet out for.
Trek Madone SLR 9 Gen 8: The spec
- Price: £12,000
- Weight: 7.4kg (size large, including bottles/cages)
- Groupset: Shimano Dura-Ace Di2
- Wheels: Bontrager Aeolus RSL 51
- Tyres: Pirelli P Zero Race 28mm tyres
- Bar/stem: Trek Aero RSL Road integrated bar/stem
- Seatpost: Madone Aero carbon seatpost
- Saddle: Bontrager Aeolus RSL
- Bottles/cages: Trek RSL Aero
- Contact: trekbikes.com
