How do you spot a new helmet? When it’s camouflaged to stop you noticing it
(Image credit: Getty Images/Tim de Waele)
Riders from Arkea-Samsic have been wearing a new aero helmet design from the team’s helmet, glasses and clothing sponsor Ekoi at the Giro d’Italia. We spotted the helmet on the head of Warren Barguil, who’s been sporting the new design with its eye-catching black and white stripes for several stages already.
The new helmet looks to be a replacement for the current Ekoi Aero14 Evo aero helmet, although it’s significantly more enclosed, with just three long, aero slot vents on the front of the helmet and no side venting. The shape, particularly in side profile, is definitely reminiscent of the new Trek Ballista helmet that also came out recently/
Like many of the best aero helmets for road use the new Ekoi helmet has a stubby tail with vents built in, rather than the more elongated profile that tends to be preferred for time trial helmets. It’s a feature that ensures efficient aerodynamics and heat dissipation and that is less affected by the rider’s head position.
The new helmet has long slot vents at the front, but otherwise has a smooth profile (Image credit: Getty Images/Tim de Waele)
As with prototype cars being tested before release, the new Ekoi helmet has a black and white masking pattern applied to it. With cars, this is designed to break up the vehicle’s outline, so that it’s more difficult to work out the new model’s shape.
That doesn’t really work for a bike helmet, particularly an aero one, where there’s less for the viewer to take in. Rather, it draws attention to the new model. We’d guess that once released, the new helmet’s colour and pattern will revert to something more run-of-the-mill and less distinctive.
Arkea-Samsic is riding the Bianchi Oltre RC with its distinctive raised stem (Image credit: Getty Images/Tim de Waele)
Arkea Samsic stepped up to the WorldTour this year and is riding the equally eye-catching Bianchi Oltre RC aero bike with its distinctive rising stem as its main bike, along with the now more aero Bianchi Specialissima lightweight bike.
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Paul has been on two wheels since he was in his teens and he's spent much of the time since writing about bikes and the associated tech. He's a road cyclist at heart but his adventurous curiosity means Paul has been riding gravel since well before it was cool, adapting his cyclo-cross bike to ride all-day off-road epics and putting road kit to the ultimate test along the way. Paul has contributed to Cyclingnews' tech coverage for a few years, helping to maintain the freshness of our buying guides and deals content, as well as writing a number of our voucher code pages.
