Historically, the Giro d'Italia doesn't often serve up a great wealth of new tech goodies, but in a year with a renewed focus on time trial tech thanks to a team time trial and an individual one at the Tour de France, it seems teams are using every opportunity to hone their setups in advance of the biggest race of the year.
While Tadej Pogačar is absent at the Giro, instead honing his form at altitude in the Sierra Nevada while rival Jonas Vingegaard attempts to mop up the full suite of Grand Tour victories for his palmarès, his teammates from UAE Team Emirates were exhibiting an all-new time trial helmet on todays stage 10 individual time trial.
This is likely the final piece of the equipment puzzle for the year, to go alongside the new, lightweight Colnago TT bike that was spotted under the Slovenian at the Tour of Romandie earlier in the year.
While the style of the new MET TT helmet isn't groundbreaking, hitting as it does all the modern tropes of being very large, especially in width, to shape the airflow around the rider's shoulders, it brings the team much more up to date.
It's not unfair to say the existing MET helmet, the Drone, was somewhat dated in it's simple tadpole shape, and was likely costing the defending champion watts that he clearly could afford to lose, but would likely rather not have to.
Perhaps the standout feature of the new helmet is the coloured lip at the base of the visor (or should that be a lens, as it is bordered for it's entire circumference). We've seen this before in a more extreme guise on the Kask visors of the Ineos Grenadiers before they were swiftly banned by the UCI.
It's vaguely reminiscent of the helmet worn by Miguel Indurain in his Banesto days, just a lot larger.
Unrelated to the helmet, it was also curious to see the UAE riders all using the older time trial bike, too.
Either this means the new model is just for Pogačar for now (either by design or due to supply issues), or as we suspect it's a bike that has a more balanced approach to aerodynamics and low weight, and as such will be deployed on more hilly courses.
In any case, we may be entering a new era of teams having multiple time trial machines if this sparks an arms race from other teams.
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