The mud - or dust this year - is slowly settling after a weekend of fantastic racing at Unbound Gravel 2024.
The racing there provides heaps of new and interesting gravel tech, products and hacks to deal with the challenging route. We have a premium Unbound mega tech gallery for you to enjoy, along with a pair of custom-painted Factor Ostros, a brace of canary yellow Colnago G4-Xs and three Felt gravel race bikes.
One bike that we nearly missed is what looks to be a new Trek Checkpoint gravel rig, teased online by the brand itself, and shown up in a few sneaky shots.
We don't know if this bike will be a Checkpoint or a brand-new model. Many brands have multiple gravel bikes in their lineup, with racy models alongside more adventure-friendly models. Trek still only has the Checkpoint as a dedicated gravel bike, alongside the Boone cyclocross bike and the Domane all-road bike.
Trek also has a new road bike in the works and we aren't sure of the name of that bike yet either, with the rumours suggesting it will be an amalgamation of the Madone and the Emonda. With that in mind, let's not assume anything here.
Details of the new gravel bike are even scarcer than the road bike, but we think it's safe to say a new bike is on the way, along with perhaps a new integrated carbon fibre handlebar and stem, and Bontrager gravel tyres from what we can make out from our online snooping.
The @trekbikes Instagram account made the below post. Blanking out the new bike and pretending it's not there is one way of creating a bit of positive chat ahead of a new bike release.
We did, however, manage to find a few sneaky shots, courtesy of the official Unbound press photos, and the MAAP.CC Instagram account, showing of the new bike under racers Russell Finsterwald and Hayley Hunter Smith, both of whom race for the Trek Driftless gravel race team.
The bike raced by Finsterwald (and likely a few other athletes) has a regular seatpost instead of the integrated unit with topper mast found on the existing top-level Checkpoint SLR.
It looks as though the Isospeed has been redesigned, with a single pivot point sitting just in front of the seatpost, and a seat tube that's a good amount deeper than the seatpost that sits inside it. Interestingly, the down tube storage box seems to have disappeared. Will this be a race-focused, pared-back model?
There also looks to be top tube mounts for bags which the existing bike has, and a carbon integrated handlebar we assume from the Bontrager component family.
We'll keep our eyes peeled for more details and see if Trek will give us any details in the meantime, and we'll be sure to update this story when we know more.
