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CHRIS RIEKERT: So the start of the tour always brings out new
technology.
The S-works Evade is a helmet that we've been seeing all
early season here on some of the spring classics.
Mark Cavendish has raced it to a number of wins, along with
Tom Boonen in [INAUDIBLE]
even in the GRL.
The idea here is to bring what we learned from the McLaren TT
project earlier this year for aerodynamics in a time trial
helmet over into a road platform.
So what you're going to see throughout the tour is all of
our riders switching back and forth between their Prevail
and the new S-works evade.
Hills, climbs, anything like that where they're going
uphill, maybe lower speeds, and they need more
ventilation, we're going to see all the athletes maybe
favoring something like the traditional Prevail--
a road helmet with a lot of venting.
Very, very lightweight.
Very, very comfortable fit system that's going to really
help to keep them cooled down on stages where
they're moving slower.
Faster days when they're on this sprints, when they're
moving more quickly, when they need that aerodynamic
advantage, they're going to move more maybe towards the
S-works Evade.
So this helmet we designed throughout last year, and it
was all about bringing, again, that fast feel into a
road-style helmet.
There may be a lot of vent on this helmet-- you can see them
all over the front, all over the back.
But the nice thing about it is when we worked with that
McLaren TT helmet, we learned about how to actually channel
air over the surface of the helmet to help cool the
rider's head, but to still keep a
very aerodynamic profile.
Now when we start to talk about overall gains of this,
everyone always thinks about, well, what's
that raw speed increase?
Does it make me faster as a rider?
And it certainly does.
You're going to feel about the same aerodynamic advantage
that you feel from a traditional time trial helmet.
Now one thing that I always think is interesting is the
overall gain over a stage.
Through calculations that the specialized racing program has
run, what we figured out is that around a five-hour stage,
riders are going to save around 400
kilojoules of energy.
Now that's a really big deal, because when they come into
the sprint at the finish, the guy with the most pop is going
to be the one who saved the most energy
throughout the day.
So look for our riders on all three specialized teams to be
supporting both the Prevail and the new S-works Evade.