Madison’s iceBike* Show Report 1

This weekend sees the first opening of the Madison show iceBike* to the public. By all accounts, there are thousands of people registered and they’ll all get to see a preview of 2016 (and in some cases 2017) products on show. We had a preview with the trade earlier this week, and here’s what caught our collective eye.

Let’s start with the bikes:

Saracen Myst Carbon Team Prototype. This is one of the team bikes that the Madison Saracen team have been riding since the World Champs last year. Saracen asked team manager Will Longden for a ‘still muddy’ bike to show off on the booth – and when this turned up, it was true to the brief and still literally dripping mud, with barely a clean surface on it.

Comprehensively grubby

But mostly just muddy…

The team has been riding these bikes hard through the winter and customers can buy the exact same model

Clean stanchions show how much travel is still used

Half bike, half vegetable

Over at the cleaner side of the booth, the Saracen Kili Flyer carbon was on show in this single available build. There’s also a (Martini Racing) frame only option.

Like the skinwalls? Yes or no?

The alloy Saracen Mantra hardtail has had a refresh for 2016

There’s even a brand new electric-assist Saracen coming

The beautiful Mantra Carbon has had a major price drop. Now £1299 complete!

Beers or briefcase? This rack will take either.

Madison’s complete product range is in this giant telephone book sized brochure. Despite the digital revolution, sometimes it’s easier to leaf through some pages.

Moving over to the Genesis booth (whose brochure was shot by Sim Mainey of this parish) there were some great bikes on show. This Genesis High Latitude is a £1549 29er hardtail with a 1×11 setup and an SR Suntour Aion fork and some chunky 2.35in Maxxis rubber.

Comes in Small, Medium and Large/XL

Moving over, there’s this Genesis Tarn 20, a plus bike with the full Boost/WTB Scraper rim/Maxxis Chronicle treatment. It’s the bike that the Genesis guys seem most excited about this year and we hope to get one in on test soon.

Tons of room – plus cabling for a front mech

Genesis showed off the latest incarnation of the Caribou fat bike, with hugely bright paint job and very loud CST tyres.

The new incarnation of the Caribou is hard to miss

That’s a taster of the bikes on show, we’ll let you see the components in the next story.

Chipps Chippendale

Singletrackworld's Editor At Large

With 23 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps is the longest-running mountain bike magazine editor in the world. He started in the bike trade in 1990 and became a full time mountain bike journalist at the start of 1994. Over the last 30 years as a bike writer and photographer, he has seen mountain bike culture flourish, strengthen and diversify and bike technology go from rigid steel frames to fully suspended carbon fibre (and sometimes back to rigid steel as well.)