Unreleased POC helmet worn by entire EF Education-Cannondale team at Brugge-De Panne

Before the start of the women’s Brugge-De Panne, all riders on team EF Education-Cannondale were spotted using the as-of-yet unreleased POC road helmet.

The helmet has been spotted since the start of the 2024 season with both the men’s and women’s outfits using the helmets across the spring calendar, however this is the first time the whole team has opted to use the unreleased model at the same race.

• Read more: Unreleased POC helmet sees early season success at the hands of EF Education-Cannondale

During the team's warm-up ahead of the race riders were spotted nestling the integrated magnetic visor in the open cavity at the rear of the helmet – a neat and tidy way to store the bulky visor when not in use.

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The helmet features a visor retention system on the rear of the helmet

The complete adoption of the helmet looks to push the Ventral helmet to redundancy at least in the faster races that favour aero equipment. This is due to the higher average speeds of flatter parcours where aerodynamics offer the most significant savings. The new helmet looks to take most of its inspiration from the Procen TT helmet with an identical vent layout but with a slightly shorter profile to the rear and less drop on the sides with the helmet only covering the upper section of the rider's ears.

This comes only days after Alberto Bettiol used the same helmet on his daring solo raid towards the end of Milano-Torino that resulted in victory. In this he came fully prepared to be as slippery through the wind as possible, using the unreleased helmet along with a long sleeve TT skinsuit, aero overshoes and every aero equipment choice available to the team including the slightly more aero version of Wahoo’s Speedplay pedals.

• Read more: Unreleased Kask helmet with ear covers spotted on Filippo Ganna

Helmets look to be an area of cycling kit that is the new frontier for aero advantages with POC not alone in revealing a helmet that looks to blend a common aero road helmet with the more specific aero optimisation of a time trial helmet. An unreleased Kask helmet has also been spotted with a similar dropped profile covering the tops of the rider’s ears.

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Although only a few riders wore the unreleased helmet to sign on, by race time it was a clean sweep across the whole team

Recently Visma-Lease a Bike attempted to break the cycling corner of the internet with a radical new TT helmet that used a large profile to act as an aero faring for the rider's shoulders. With other teams such as Bahrain Victorious also following suit, the development of aerodynamically influenced design doesn’t look to be slowing down.

With the whole EF Education-Cannondale women’s team using the TT-esque helmet, it looks as though this could just be the start of a new generation of aero-optimised racing equipment.

What do you make of the new helmet and are you excited to see what the future of kit design holds? Let us know in the comments section below. For all the latest tech news make sure to head to the dedicated tech news section of the GCN website.