The Wiggster uses his filled in helmet at the Tour. It was notable that Wiggins didn’t use the helmet at the sweltering Vuelta, which he lost after forgetting to check which gears to use on the ferociously pitched Angrilu, although if you’d listened to Ned Boulting and Matt Rendell’s commentary, you’d have thought the race organisers would have just given his the jersey after the first time trial, such was the giddy over enthusiastic screaching whenever the stick thin Brit simply appeared in shot. Bradley Wiggins, probably driven by Sky’s sometime tedious and sterile campaign for the much publisised ‘marginal gains’, began wearing a black Kask with the vents filled in in his ill-fated 2011 Tour de France, which no doubt helped ‘the numbers be right’. It’s certainly debatable – it seems undoubtably to be the first mass marketed, publically avaliable contraption, but as for the first used, it would appear that Kask beat them too it, closely followed by Specialised. Lazer‘s clip on cover wasn’t orginally adveritsed as ‘aero’, though Andre Greipel appears to be using it for such an effect, and with better aesthetics then this Russia/Flanders clash! So perhaps then, it is the original aero road helmet?
Giro, on the other hand, are keen to point out the Air Attack still keeps their signature ventilation, and thus manages to both keep your head cool as well as saving you 17 seconds per 25 miles. Whilst the aero benefits of blocking up the helmet vents are evident, Lazer didn’t advertise their solution as being ‘aero’, rather choosing to market it as an effective cyclo-cross product to protect heads from the cold and rain by stopping the elements from entering. For Lazer, the Belgian brand founded in 1919, began producing snap on helmet covers in 2010 for the Tour of Flanders, although this did look rather odd given they sponsored Katusha, whose glorious Moscow skyline jersey didn’t exactly contrast well with the bright yellow and black of the lion of Flanders the cover was adorned with. The precusor to the Air Attack? David Millar wears a prototype aero road helmet (note the lack of ear coverage) on the Champs-Elysees in 2011.īut a ha, you may say, they were but mere time trial helmets, and the new Air Attack is a road helmet! Indeed, this is true (Well…Millar’s helmet was actually a prototype helmet from Giro, and whilst it shares the ‘Shield’, ie Visor, of the Air Attack, it’s venting is minimal and it appears have been consigned to the history books), but the Air Attack isn’t the first one of these either. The rule was relaxed on the final climb of mountain stages until 2005, where the rule was enforced through the entirety of a race no matter what or where it finished upon.) Aero helmets have even featured in road stages before – David Millar of Garmin-Cervelo used a aero helmet on the final stage of the 2010 Tour de France into Paris as part of the teams attempt to win with Tyler Farrar. Aero helmets themselves have been around since the 1984 Olympics, where some impressively pointy aero helmets could be spied, and during the late Eighties, when Greg Lemond got his buddies at Giro, more specifically founder Jim Gentes, to come up with an aero helmet in a time where the proffesionals generally couldnt be bothered to wear one, if the photographic evidence is anything to go by (Helmets only became compulsory in the proffesional peloton after Andrei Kivilev’s death in the 2003 Paris-Nice, sadly 13 years after they had attempted to introduce the same rule at the very same race only for protests to prevent it. Well, it’s certainly not a new idea – more the most well marketed version of it. The Old Air Attack, which didn’t have a shield.
But is it as original as it claims? Are the insults over its appearance overridden by the science behind it? The apparently novel helmet is being branded ugly, pointless, a fashion accessory and a host of of other insults.
In the last few days, Giro, the Californian manufacturer whom now produce everything from helmets through to shoes, unveilved their new ‘Air Attack’ helmet, claimed to be the ‘lowest wind-averaged aerodynamic drag of any road helmet design.’ In doing so, they’ve created quite a furore.
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