On Monday, the lads at Visma – Lease A Bike showed up to the start line of the opening TT of Tirreno-Adriatico with a totally wild and unique aero helmet, shocking the cycling world. The jokes and meme game was strong on social media. Thomas De Gendt (joked, I hope) along with a few others that they were quitting cycling. Many likened the lid to that of Rick Mercer’s Vader helmet in Space Balls. But Jonas Vingegaard says the jokes will stop once we realize how quick it is.
I’m not going to say the tt helmets are ugly. I’m just saying it’s a good moment to stop cycling.
— Thomas De Gendt (@DeGendtThomas) March 4, 2024
“It’s it’s a very, very good helmet. “I think it’s very, very fast,” he told cyclingnews. “”I’ve seen the helmet already in December and January. And yeah, so back then I had a bit of a laugh. But yeah, when you test it, when you see how fast it is, then you won’t laugh anymore.”
— Cycling out of context (@OutOfCycling) March 5, 2024
He said that the team worked on it a lot in 2023. “It’s different, of course, but yeah, I mean, it’s very fast. And I think that will be the future,” the defending Tour de France champion said.
No one used TT bikes and the times didn’t count at the O Gran Camiño TT
Visma – LAB elaborated on the new helmet in a statement on Tuesday about how they will ride time trials with the Aerohead ll in 2024. “It is a project that has been running for more than a year. The aim is to create an even better time trial helmet than last year’s,” Mathieu Heijboer, Head of Performance at Team Visma | Lease a Bike said.”We tested the helmet extensively last winter. We did this using prototypes and position scans of several riders, including Jonas Vingegaard and Wout van Aert, among others.”
Aerodynamic but with better visibility
According to the Dutch team, the helmet is specially designed to sit in the aero position. “It is therefore no coincidence that we have made a lot of progress in that area,” he added. The striking visor on the front is also said to help the see when they are tucked on the bars. This has been a problem for some cyclists in the past; Stefan Küng had a brutal crash at the European championships as his head was down and he crashed into a barrier.
“An added bonus is that riders can have even better visibility than before. The reason for this is that the visor of this helmet is a lot bigger than the previous…
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