Over the years, while doing aero work in different wind tunnels, I've examined cable routing, frame shapes, hand and elbow widths and a host of other factors that can affect aerodynamics. Recently I've started looking into areas that aren't so obvious--like helmets.

The questions I get asked most often are, "What's the fastest wheel?" and "What's the fastest helmet?" I'm gonna talk helmets now; wheels will wait for another time.

The last time any real aero work on helmets was done by a major manufacturer was during the late '80s, for Greg Lemond. Jim Gentes, founder and then-owner of Giro helmets, got interested in aerodynamics and started coming to the wind tunnel to try to build faster products. This was during Lemond's heyday, so Giro spent a bunch of money on testing and developing new helmet manufacturing techniques to build a better product. Gentes would dream up some pretty weird shapes that had beaks, bills, wings, flaps, slots, or dimples--anything to find some speed. At the time, no Europeans would wear a helmet in a race, so trying to break those barriers was a big marketing gamble. Greg Lemond had the charisma and the presence to pull it off,  so pretty soon the European riders sort of "got on board" and helmets were "in." A few riders found out they were often faster wearing a helmet, and the great search for speed was on.

During these early tests we discovered that the original long-tail helmets that were designed for the '84 Olympics really didn't work too well with aero bars. These helmets were designed for use when riding cowhorn bars with very slack seat positions. When Boone Lennon came along with aerobars for Lemond, they were so fast we didn't have to consider the speed value in helmets for several years. Eventually Gentes lost interest, and Giro was selling so many helmets it didn't matter anyway, so there wasn't much testing done.

Right around 1992 Troxel undertook a strong helmet program in an attempt to establish itself as a bigger presence in the helmet market. Their head engineer did a bunch of testing in several tunnels and finally came down to Texas A&M for one of our sessions. They built a cool titanium-covered helmet with ridges and dimples everywhere, and almost every racer that saw it was sure the aero gods had put this on the planet for them. At Ironman in '94 we had the first "Science of Speed" panel to give all the nervous racers something to do during the week before the race. I was on a panel with five or wix other people, including Greg Lemond, and we all took questions from the audience. One of the racers asked the Troxel helmet engineer just how fast this new helmet really was. He stood up and talked about five minutes about all sorts of things, but at the very last he said his research showed that their racing helmet would save about three feet over 100 miles. I'm pretty sure that was the end for those swoopy-looking helmets.

During these years I kept noticing that the pointy helmets were always faster when the riders would drop their head down and have the tails sticking up in the air. I believed this was because of the way that using aerobars made the air go over the shoulders, but the helmet companies never put much stock in that theory. They were diverting most of their R&D money to the safety side of things, with which I have no quarrel. And they have developed much lighter, cooler and prettier helmets. But they are also much slower helmets.  In October '98 Lance Armstrong called me and said he wanted to do a big wind tunnel camp for his team to be held the following January. I've worked with Lance many times since '91 and always found him very interested and "smart" about positioning and equipment, and I eagerly agreed.

We all got together at the tunnel to do a bunch of testing on six team riders to get them ready for time trials in the upcoming season. During this testing I had each rider use several different head positions to show how important it is that they hold their head "just so" during a race. Sometimes it really doesn't matter, and sometimes it is a big deal. In Lance's case I was able to show that his drag dropped a bunch when his face was down and the helmet tail was sticking pretty much straight up. I had to run several tests to convince everyone this was the case. The numbers don't lie, and I was sure we had found some speed.  Lance was pretty excited and said he'd get Giro to build anything I dreamed up, so I got started designing what I hoped would be a pretty fast helmet.

Helmets in European racing don't have to meet any kind of crash test so the "TT" helmets are just very thin shells that cover your head. Giro sent me one of their then-current Rev 4 TT helmets and I glued and taped cardboard all over it. Unfortunately (or perhaps not), we were all about out of time by now, and this helmet was turned out in about 3 weeks. This left ZERO time for testing, so we all had our fingers crossed. One of Giro's head engineers hand-delivered the helmet to Lance just before the first prologue at the Tour, they opened the box at the start line in front of all the other teams and, according to Lance, it KILLED them. The rest of that race is great history and we're all proud Americans to be involved in the least way. But....there was that nagging question: did the helmet really work?

Just after Interbike this past September Lance asked me to schedule some more wind tunnel time to recheck his position and to test a new frame Trek was building for him and, by the way, could we check that helmet, too? Gotta hate it when your butt's really on the line--but it was a fair question, and I really did want Lance to win again next year, so, here we go...

We started out testing everything exactly the way he raced, then started making changes. Giro sent three talented engineers to start getting ready for some serious aero efforts on their future helmet lines and to help improve Lance's helmet further, if possible. As I said earlier, the numbers don't lie, and the new Rev 5 did work better...a little. But its real benefit is in evening out the drag for any head position Lance assumes, which relates to real speed on the road. We all worked some more on helmet shapes, and there's more cool stuff coming in the future. How much faster is this helmet? Remember Troxel's three feet they were so proud of? Try one and three-quarter miles over that same 100-mile ride.