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Giro debuts wild looking futuristic new helmet – how long before we see one in a triathlon?

Wild looking helmet makes debut at Italian stage race

Photo by: X/ Team Visma | Lease a Bike
March 4, 2024
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It used to be the triathletes who would try the wild looking equipment first! (Remember, cyclists, that we were using tri bars for years before Greg Lemond won the Tour using his.) Today, though, it is the cyclists who came surged ahead with a very wild looking helmet that has garnered lots of attention.

“Just when we thought TT helmets couldn’t get any weirder: Giro leaves us speechless,” was the Cycling News headline describing the Team Visma |Lease a Bike’s new Giro helmets they’ll be using for the prologue of the Tirreno Adriatico cycling race.

Will we see any of these crazy aero helmets in transition this year?

The new Giro helmets feature a huge visor that protrudes well out in front of the rider. Like other unique aero designs we’ve seen, the latest Giro helmet is extremely wide, especially at the rear, in order to help air flow past the rider’s shoulders.

“Excited to use our brand new innovative Giro helmets for the first time,” the team posted on X (formerly Twitter) today.

“This helmet design is as radical as it gets,” Velon CC posted.

According to cycling news, the massive visor is removable and “wraps around the side of the helmet, no doubt increasing the peripheral vision of the rider, but perhaps more pertinently is that it continues upward right to the front of the leading ‘point.’”

Photo: X/ Team Visma | Lease a Bike

The new helmet seems to take the aero advantages of the Giro Aerohead MIPS to a new extreme – we loved the wrap-around eye shield in that helmet during our review. The Aerohead MIPS offered decent ventilation – whether or not this new Giro helmet will be as suitable for triahlon racing remains to be seen.

While ventilation is a critical issue for triathletes, for cyclists doing a short prologue event (the event later today in Italy is just 10 km) where time is of the essence, a hot head isn’t quite as much an issue. We can’t wait to get a closer look at this wild helmet to see if it will be appropriate for triathlon use.

Who knows – maybe we’ll see one in transition at this weekend’s T100 Miami event.