From CyclingNews.com
Trek has announced the arrival of an all-new gravel race bike called the Checkmate SLR alongside an update to the existing Checkpoint SL.
The Checkmate SLR sports a lot of design cues from the brand’s aero road bike the Madone with the same Full System Foil approach as well as borrowing the Madone’s aero cockpit.
From Bicycling.com
This week, Trek stores and participating Trek retailers will begin accepting the return of used Trek bicycles in exchange for in-store credit to buy a new bike, the company announced. The used bikes will then be refurbished and sold on the brand’s website, trekbikes.com. This will be the first manufacturer-led trade-in and refurbishment program in the bike industry.
The program, which has been named Red Barn Refresh in a nod to Trek’s storied birthplace, the Red Barn, has a lot of similarities with vehicle trade in programs and purchasing a “certified pre-owned” car.
Once a used bike is traded in, it will be returned to Trek in Waterloo, Wisconsin, where trained techs will repair and replace what’s needed before it is ‘certified awesome’ and resold online to people looking to score a great bike with a lower carbon footprint—and a more affordable price.
From CyclingWeekly.com
BY
The dust has now settled, the bell-lap completed, and after many months of testing and hours of discussion, the results are in for Cycling Weekly’s 2023 Race Bike of the Year award – but we won’t be giving them away quite so quickly.
First, let’s back up to the criteria for entry. Our first stipulation for Race Bike of the Year was that each model must be among the 2023 WorldTour bikes. Vitus, for instance, produces some excellent bikes – and at particularly keen price points – but none of its models met our first criterion.
Second, where a brand produces multiple models that are raced at WorldTour level (Trek has no fewer than three, for example) we’ve chosen the platform we find most notable. This has seen us include the new Giant Propel over the venerable TCR, for example, and the new Cannondale SuperSix over the similarly ‘mature’ SystemSix.
Which brings us neatly on to the topic of bike design, or rather the dichotomy between aero bikes and climbers’ bikes. Over recent years, aero bikes as a category have seen some huge shifts in their remit. The tropes of aero bikes being anchors on the hills and shopping trolleys on anything but the smoothest tarmac are long gone. The latest crop of the best aero bikes have haemorrhaged excess weight and boosted comfort levels – all bikes on test can be built to the UCI weight limit and can fit 28mm tyres as a minimum, some going up to as much as 34mm.
Image Courtesy of Cannondale
From Cyclist.co.uk
Hot on the heels of the launch of the new Émonda ALR, Trek has released the latest generations of its Ballista Mips and Velocis Mips top-tier helmets. Trek says both helmets have been designed around the needs of the Trek-Segafredo team, and included the team’s riders in the R&D process.
The Ballista is Trek’s aero helmet. This second generation is now a claimed 5.4 watts faster than the previous model. The Velocis sits as a performance all-rounder, with a larger focus on light weight and high ventilation, which Trek says is now 38% better than the last version.
Both helmets do not use WaveCel, Trek’s solution to mitigate rotational violence in a similar way to MIPS’ slip-plane liners, but conventional MIPS instead, and have achieved 5-star ratings in Virginia tech testing.
Image courtesy of Trek
From BikeRadar.com
It’s been said many times that performance aero race bikes now all look the same – deep tube sections, dropped seatstays and one-piece integrated cockpits typify the modern aero road bike.
That changed with the launch of the new seventh-generation Trek Madone though; its radical seat tube design, with the saddle cantilevered over the rear of the bike and its cut-out at the top of the seat tube, helps to set it apart from other options on the market.
“It needs to be a bike you can just look at and say ‘wow’ and that’s differentiated from everybody else. Our industrial design language helps the bike’s performance as well,” says Jordan Roessingh, director of road bikes at Trek.
Trek says the new Madone is also very efficient, losing 300 grams of weight from the previous model and gaining 20 watts of aerodynamic advantage. This adds up to a saving of around a minute for every hour of riding over a range of speeds, according to the brand.
We talked to Roessingh about the development of the new Madone and its benefits.
Development of the latest seventh-generation Madone started almost three years ago, as soon as the previous generation was launched.
“We already knew a lot of areas of improvement that we could apply to the next version,” says Roessingh.
Trek’s main focus was on reducing the weight of the new Madone.
“Any time we’re talking about a race bike, speed, aerodynamics and weight become the primary factors that we focus on. The previous version of the Madone was a really fast bike, it was a great-riding bike, it was not a light bike,” Roessingh continues.
There’s a new Trek Madone on show at this year’s Tour de France! First spotted at the Critérium du Dauphiné, the bike is striking, with a futuristic aero seatpost, flared handlebars, and, in Mads Pedersen’s case, massive SRAM chainrings. Si took a close-up look at the Trek-Segafredo superstar’s new Tour de France steed!
