THIS WEEK IN PRO CYCLING
Tour Tech: Giro rockets into the Ionos(phere)
The latest piece of helmet hardware from Giro was unveiled at a downtown hotel in Strasbourg on Sunday. The new lid, dubbed Ionos, is the next generation in a line that started back in 1987 with the egg-shaped Pro Light. But the Ionos bears little resemblance to its ancestor. Instead the company claims that this stealthy offering is lighter and stronger than anything it’s offered before.
The Ionos is said to weigh 260 grams (medium size) and will be available starting in spring 2007. In the meantime riders from Discovery Channel, Rabobank and Phonak are getting the first crack at it. Starting with stage 1 of the Tour de France all three teams’ riders will be sporting the new helmet. That will result in about 50,000 combined miles of riding, yielding feedback that Giro will incorporate into the finished product.
Besides the team designs, keep an eye out for a few additional colors. If any rider from one of the three Giro-sponsored squads ends up in one of the Tour’s four coveted jerseys, he’ll get a helmet to match. Already Giro has provided a white version to Rabobank’s Joost Posthuma, best placed in the young-rider competition after Saturday’s prologue.
Giro also unveiled a new logo on Sunday. Warren Gravely, the company’s senior product manager, explained that the change was done in part to match up the logos from the company’s snow- and bike-helmet divisions, and also to accommodate the Ionos, which is so shaved down that the old logo simply wouldn’t fit. This year also marks Giro’s 20th anniversary, and evidently it was simply time for a change.
The Ionos name comes from the same lineage at its predecessor, the Atmos. While Atmos was short for atmosphere, Ionos is a reference to the ionosphere. The new helmet will come in both road and cross-country versions, with the visorless offering selling for $215, and the fat-tire lid going for $225.
The primary features of the new helmet are its 21 “massive” vents and a visible weave of carbon fiber. The vents will presumably aid in cooling, while the carbon fiber adds reinforcement. Gravely explained that the carbon fiber gives the helmet “the ability to manage impacts while reducing the helmet’s overall weight.”
