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Jonas Vingegaard says we will all shut up once we see how fast the new Giro helmet is

Team Visma - Lease a Bike debuted the Aerohead II, a radical new TT lid

Jonas Vingegaard says we will all shut up once we see how fast the new Giro helmet is Photo by: Paris Nice /Twitter
March 5, 2024
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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.

“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.”

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.

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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 one,” Heijboer added.

The riders on the team have seen these helmets many months before we cycling fans have, but they too were certainly taken aback at the appearance. But as Vingegaard said after the Stage 1 TT, the stopped laughing once they saw the data.

“The riders did look up a bit when they first saw the helmet, but in the end that didn’t last long,” Heijboer added. “After a few tests and seeing the gains, everyone was quickly convinced.”

UCI weighs in

The helmets are custom-made for each rider and comply with UCI rules, the statement concluded. On Tuesday, the riders used the helmets in the team time trial at Paris-Nice. However, on Tuesday, the international governing body put out its own statement, saying they will be an analysis of the new style of TT helmets being used by several teams. The statement referred to both the Giro Aerohead II, as well as the Rudy Project Windgream HL 85 helmet and Poc Tempor.

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The UCI acknowledged that they may not directly contravene existing Regulations. However, it raises a significant issue concerning the current and wider trend in time trial helmet design, “which focuses more on performance than the primary function of a helmet, namely to ensure the safety of the wearer in the event of a fall.”

Mechanics and staff on the team were also quick to defend the new gear, “It’s a new way of thinking about the aerodynamics of a helmet,” Paul Martens, the Visma-Lease a Bike equipment manager said in an interview with French outlet L’Équipe. “We truly think we have found a real improvement in our system for time trials.”