Pro Bike: John Degenkolb’s custom painted Trek Madone race bike

You know you’ve made it as a professional cyclist when your team’s bike sponsor gifts you a specially prepared custom painted bike. This here is John Degenkolb’s Project One Trek Madone with a "Chasin' Aces” theme inspired by his passion for classic café racer motorcycles.

Last year Degenkolb had a Trek Domane SLR painted in a “Café Racer” paint scheme that was also available to buy through Trek’s Project One customisation programme.

The Madone, an aerodynamic road bike, better suits Degenkolb’s sprinting talents, which have landed him two stage wins this year already in the Challenge Mallorca. He’ll be racing this bike at the Dubai Tour which starts this week.

- Trek Madone 9 Series Project One

According to the Trek press release, this new "Chasin' Aces" design features pin-striping over a Black Moss base colour with red fades inside the fork and chainstays, finished with a dash of silver, all inspired by his love of classic café racer motorcycles.

Does he like it? Course he does!

"For me, my new Madone is one of the most beautiful bikes I have ever ridden. I like this perfect combination between a great colour and all the nice details that give me a lot of motivation to keep chasing the aces and adding more of those to my palmarès. I have got already two of them and I want to collect some more," said John Degenkolb.

And if you like the paint job, you can get your own through Project One, where you can build your own bike and order it through your local Trek dealer.

Aside from the paint scheme, it’s business as usual with a Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 groupset and a host of Bontrager components, including the Aeolus 5 wheels, one-piece aero carbon handlebar and stem, Montrose Pro saddle and XXX carbon bottle cages.

The only deviation from the Shimano and Bontrager theme is the choice of Vittoria Corsa tyres in a 25mm width.

- 2018 WorldTour race bikes - The complete list of this year's race bikes