SPRING-FRESH TECH

This year's Spring Classics provided a host of hot tech to sink our teeth into, from pro tweaks to new products galore. Here are some of the highlights...

- Words Liam Cahill

Time-trial helmets for road racing are now a thing...

Horror spread across the cycling world when Visma-Lease a Bike riders were seen wearing time-trial helmets during their recon ride for the opening race, Omloop Het Nieuwsblad. Traditionalists may have been aghast, but for riders such as Matthew Brennan (right), the simple promise of free speed more than made up for that — he candidly said he'd been told the Giro Aerohead was faster, so he was happy to wear it. Speaking before the start, however, his teammate Matteo Jorgenson admitted his team were simply trying to mess with the heads of other riders. A fair number of racers lined up in a go-faster lid, including EF Education-Easypost's men's and women's teams, sporting the POC Procen Air helmet, resplendent with a TT-style visor.

...As are glued-on Tubeless tyres

At Paris-Roubaix, Wout Van Aert rode his Cervélo Soloist to fourth place with his 32mm Vittoria Corsa Pro tyres glued to his Reserve rims. Many teams have trialled tubeless inserts in an effort to aid tyre retention in the event of a blowout, but this is among the first times we've heard of tyres being glued. Well, that is if you ignore tubulars, of course. In this case, mechanics applied a layer of Vittoria's Mastik Pro tubular glue to the external rim-tyre interface to help hold the tyres in place on both Van Aert's bike and those of his Visma-Lease a Bike teammates.

Gravaa's tyre-pressure system appears again