POC's leaked helmet confirms it: covering the ears is trendy in cycling

After unveiling a few weeks ago the design of the new Kask road aerodynamic helmet on the head of Filippo Ganna, now, in the first race of the season, the Tour Down Under, it has been seen that the cyclists of EF Education-EasyPost are using a similar design in their POC helmets in what seems to be the next evolution of helmets of this style.

Evolution of aero helmets. POC also dares to cover the ears to gain aerodynamics

The Tour Down Under is already underway, the first World Tour race of the season and, from the beginning, we start to see new features in the cyclists' equipment, obviously, those that had managed to go unnoticed during the preseason and that, with television as a witness, do not escape any good bike enthusiast.

One of the most curious is the design of the POC aerodynamic helmet that we could see on the head of EF Education-EasyPost cyclist Harry Sweeny and that, just like in the model advanced a few weeks ago by Kask, part of the ears are covered, imitating the lines of time trial helmets in order to reduce a little more wind resistance.

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In any case, just like with the Italian model, this POC maintains generous ventilation openings, very necessary in conditions like the Australian summer in the south of this country where the race takes place and which has welcomed the cyclists with temperatures of 40 ºC.

The design of this POC is a bit more daring than its counterpart as the lines are a bit more aggressive, accentuating the teardrop shape at the back in order to generate a cleaner exit of the airflow, both the one that surrounds the helmet and the one that goes through it from the inside. In fact, both the location of its three front air openings and the mentioned tail are very similar to its Procen time trial model. In fact, like a time trial helmet, like other aero models on the market such as the Giro Vanquish, it includes a magnetic screen that, as could be seen in the images, Sweeny used during the stage.

We will see if between Kask and POC they manage to create a trend in the design of aerodynamic helmets for daily use on the road or it is just a passing fad although, we already know, in aerodynamics it is about adding marginal gains in small details that, added up, provide us with a tangible benefit. Covering the ears seems to be the next gain that no helmet firm will want to miss.