A giant yellow M&M, a shark’s head, Darth Vader’s visor – just some of the interpretations of the new Jumbo-Vis-sorry, Visma-Lease a Bike (that’s going to take a while) helmet from Giro, the 39 year old American company who produced what is officially known as the Aerohead II. Within a week, they’d redefined what people thought innovation and taste could deliver, made the UCI row back on previous approvals of other helmets, and provoked a great deal of discussion about what exactly the point of a helmet is and whether function can be achieved to the utter detriment of aesthetics.
For the UCI’s rules, which the Aerohead follows, despite their announced “review”, technically mean it could be used in a road race. Presumably, no one would be quite that bold. The new regulations, however, state that riders must race whilst “using only a helmet that has not been altered or had any element added or removed in terms of design or form.” At a glance, that would seem to suggest there’s some kind of “base” helmet that the UCI thinks is the minimum “design or form”, and that adding aerodynamic aids is effectively banned. The loophole is perhaps in that the base form could be designed in an aerodynamic fashion, but this still seems open to interpretation, and as the UCI has approved and revoked designs seemingly just based on a whim, it doesn’t make things much clearer anyway.
So how have time trial helmets evolved over the years? What was the scientific logic at the time behind the changes that were made? Are we heading back to some sort of “Eddy Merckx is the benchmark” historical revisionism.
When were TT helmets first used?
Of course, Merckx rarely, if ever, wore a helmet, with only races in Belgium obliging the “hair net”, soft, fairly pointless foam contraptions that riders in the 70s and 80s would use to “protect” their heads from any crashes. Only in 2003 did the UCI finally make them obligatory across all races following the death of Andrei Kivilev, and even then there was an exception for mountaintop finishes, which was finally revoked in 2005.
More Smooth!
Looking back to try and find the origin of time trial helmets takes us to the 1980 Moscow Olympics, where pictures show track riders in ventless bowl style helmets, the sort you’d expect to see on a teenager on a moped in an American coming-of-age movie. Smooth and featureless, the thought process seemed to be that this would improve airflow and limit disruption by the, er, head.
The pursuit of “smooth equals fast” was epitomised by the attempts of Brit Dave Lloyd, who wore a skin suit that incorporated a hoodie of sorts in the later style of Cathy Freeman’s Sydney Olympics bodysuit, which ultimately smoothed out any turbulence generated from all that rough, messy hair.
By 1984 in Los Angeles though, a more familiar shape had emerged however: the teardrop.
More Tear droppy!
Teardrops had been used in aerodynamics since the 19th century, albeit usually facing the “wrong” way, with the point pointing forward rather than back. A teardrop shape is more aerodynamic than a circular profile as the air moving across it can stay “attached” for longer and so generate less turbulence in the wake, thus reducing the pressure differential between the front and back. Putting such a shape on people’s heads would thus theoretically create less drag from the head than a standard helmet.
More integration!
By 1995, Greg Lemond had ridden the then fastest Tour time trial in history armed with his Giro Aerohead, which he’d actually had to chop the end off to make it UCI legal (Laurent Fignon’s memoir still claims he shouldn’t have been allowed to use it at all due to these regulations.)
Despite this, and despite winning the Tour thanks to all his aero gubbins, TT helmets still didn’t take a hold of the peloton. Some riders, such as Miguel Indurain, benefited from Rudy Project’s attempts to increase the shell size of the helmet, integrating a visor in at a time that riders were also beginning to take up wearing sunglasses. Indurain asked for the “Sweeto” to be developed, and whilst it looked like Night Owl out of Watchmen, it didn’t hurt his Tour hit rate.
More tails!
Lance Armstrong famously delved into the science, both biological and physics based, to try and eke out advantages over his opponents. He famously had a million dollar frame built with a narrower Q-factor, only to discard it when it didn’t suit his pedalling motion.
With wind tunnels starting to become more popular, and Bell even building a model of Dave Zabriske to use when the American wasn’t available, the helmets began to get longer and pointier.
More dimples!
By 2011, manufacturers were starting to look at the actual surface that the air had to slip over for their next set of improvements. Louis Garneau stumbled across a golf ball, and added dimples to their offering, using the logic that the dimples on a golf ball helped keep the airflow detached, and thus meant the ball would travel further in a more aerodynamic state.
They did however forget that golf balls are typically spinning at a great number of RPM to achieve this physical feat, rather than just being stuck in one position on somebody’s head….
Mor-wait, less tails!
Somewhere along the line, somebody noticed that there was a big difference between wind tunnels and the real world. You see, it turned out that, quell surprise, riders didn’t stay in a single fixed position for the duration of the time trial, and were particularly prone to moving their heads up and down. The result was that that streamlined teardrop ended up jutting up into the turbulent air like a windbreak:
Armed with this knowledge, the designers decided to make the helmets more “stubby” – effectively shortening them substantially and returning them more to a classic rounded shape. This was particularly noticeable for Chris Froome, of “Chris Froome looking at stems” fame as he utilised his Kask Bambino:
Comparing 2008 Cadel Evans, and his Specialized Helmet, with 2014 Cadel Evans and his Bell (no laughing at the back), gives a good show of the drastic shortening that had taken place over those years:
Nothing is ever really new nowadays mind, and the same was true in cycling: Chris Boardman had utilised a “stubby” helmet to great effect in his 90s heyday:
More visors!
By the 2010’s, bike makers had decided that cables were the devil incarnate, and had begun work on their next great mission: integration. After market handlebars, seat posts and even brakes began to disappear as manufacturers routed the cables through increasingly intricate solutions, and began to consider that it was the entire system of the bicycle and rider, rather than necessarily just the frame, that would ultimately affect aerodynamics.
Mavic even went as far as releasing a set of wheels, the CXR80, that included three symbiotic parts – a wheel, a tyre, and an strip of material that apparently smoothed the aeroflow between the tyre and wheel rim.
When extended to helmets, this meant that sunglasses were now out, and visors were in. Giro were perhaps first with their “Selector”, which, as the name suggests, allowed riders to select from a choice of two tails to better integrate with their positions. It also included a visor which connected via a series of plastic plugs.
Not to be outdone, Team Sky went for the marginal gains approach and made sure their visor was more easily removable – it could either be attached to the helmet in a, er, unattached manner (i.e. the visor was no longer a visor) or just thrown away if in a race (and presumably collected by a team member). It did this with magnets.
Out came the visors then, as manufacturers rushed to gain a slice of what was becoming the TT/Triathlon market, judging by how the bikes were now marketed.
Giro also updated the Selector into the Aerohead, which featured a wraparound visor so large, it looked like it was theoretically designed to allow the user to see behind them.
More volume!
In Sweden in 2004, POC, which stands for “Piece Of Cake” (really!), were born, but they came to the fore in 2012 when Gustav Laarson, the Beijing Olympics silver medalist, wore their Tempor time trial helmet in an attempt to take a further step up the podium. He only came 16th in London, but the bright orange helmet caused quite a stir.
The colour probably helped, but the helmet was also massive by comparison to its contemporaries. Add in the “wings” it seemed to have, and it was a rather striking aesthetic that went against the grain of what was seen to be reasonable.
It also shook conventional wisdom that aerodynamics was about slipping through the wind with the smallest possible silhouette. Bike and wheel design was beginning to move away from this, with tyres/rims becoming wider, kamtails becoming thicker, and a general acceptance that the attachment of the air, rather than the slicing through it, was more important in aerodynamic terms.
It took a while, but steadily, more volume became the approach for helmet makers.
Indeed, not to be outdone by their Swedish cousins, the Norwegian company Sweet unleashed “The Redeemer” on the world – to instant comparisons with Darth Vader.
That’s not a hole, by the way – it is a laminar flow bypass duct, to help direct the air over rider’s shoulders. Getting the air over the shoulders seemed to be a new tactic, as it formed the basis for Rudy Project’s Wingdream – two years in development, and another massive visor and bulbous look, but with the visor this time acting as the device to funnel air over the shoulders.
More Secure!
Specialized where also buying into the volumetric approach, but as always, had an extra innovation to include – a balaclava.
The balaclava apparently smooths airflow better than the traditional straps, and also keeps the helmet in the correct position better. Add in a massive visor, and it fitted right in with the current crop of helmets, until the UCI banned the balaclava part of course. The snood jokes were no more.
More Sharky!
Just when you thought it was safe to dive back into the TT scene, Giro updated their original Aerohead, to create the Aerohead II – the one that successfully broke the internet.
Interestingly, Chris Boardman came out to tell us, with evidence, that the British Olympic team had considered a similar idea back in 2008, using the helmet to fill the gap between the hands and head by extending the front out considerably. Boardman suggested it was binned for the “trauma” it would cause fans and athletes, which give the aesthetics of their attempt, is probably fair.
Giro’s effort is also wide, which has led to its “hammer head shark” nickname, and has a wrap around visor so large it seems to effectively create a shield to elongate the rider’s profile all the way to the outer bounds of their shoulders.
Where next then?! Well, I’ve personally always wondered why they don’t put the radios in the helmets, though given it’s apparently aerodynamic to stick an item up the front of your skinsuit, that won’t be happennening any time soon. Likewise, these massive visors can surely display data now, which would prevent the sort fo Kung style disaster where riders spend their time with their heads down and genuinely need to be told when to steer by their team cars.
For now though, enjoy the madness before the UCI becomes all small-c conservative and tries to find a way to return everything to the Eddy Merckx era a la the Hour record.
Sicycle 
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