The aero helmet is arguably the most important piece of equipment in a cyclist’s arsenal in their quest against the clock. Powering in a pursuit position in the aerobars, it’s quite literally the leading edge against the wind for a rider.

Developing a protective helmet to help cut the smoothest path through the wind—to move it with minimal turbulence onto and over the body— and doing so with a modicum of cooling effect, is in effect the confluence of diametrically opposed concepts. Making a helmet aero, and cool, and work on a wide variety of riders? That’s a challenge.

“I see it like this,” said Jean Paul Ballard, a former F1 Racing concept design lead. “Everyone asks, ‘what’s the fastest helmet?’ It should always be rephrased as ‘what’s the helmet best suited to me as an athlete, for how my body moves, how my head moves, how I sit on the bike, what kind of cooling I need?’ Rudy Project wanted to create a new helmet that was tolerant of all these things.”

Rudy Project took the totality of that to task in developing a new helmet: The Wing.

Indeed, the cycling helmet industry is loaded with many iterations of tear dropped aero helmets. And while the end goal—speed—is always the same, the results have been very different, on athletes ranging from professionals who can hold their heads in a single tucked position, unmoved for four hours, to age group racers, weekend warriors that also want the advantage of speed, but had greater need to look around for safety, to look down to get bottles to stay hydrated, to receive airflow and stay cool in a long race. We knew a properly designed helmet could be designed better for the everyday athlete—and the pro.

Our baseline for improvement was Rudy Project’s previous time trial/triathlon helmet: the Wing 57, co-developed with aerodynamics expert John Cobb in 2013. That helmet was preceded by the Wingspan, debuted in 2009, also a Cobb partnership project. The goals? Quite simple: a faster helmet for a wide range of cyclists—and a cooler helmet. It’s quite common to achieve excellence in one category, but fail miserably in the other. To score wins in both categories would be a tall task.

The project to make the fastest time trial/tri helmet in the world began in Treviso, Italy. Rudy Project’s team of engineers at the company headquarters decided to make every investment in creating the fastest helmet in the world—for every rider. We relied upon our team of designers to create the helmet, but also partnered with Swiss Side. Known best for its range of aero wheels, the Zurich-based company led by CEO Ballard—a former F1 racing concept design lead—has been on the leading edge of wind tunnel testing, with a unique access to Airbus wind tunnel in Immenstaad, Germany. The tunnel itself is earning a reputation; while every tunnel can test airflow aerodynamics, the Airbus facility has the unique capacity to test thermodynamics, with the ability to calculate heat rejection via head forms wired with thermal measurement capability. “The facility is cutting edge in every way,” Ballard said. “The aero data is granular, but we can also now quantify cooling based on how much air can get through a helmet.”

The two companies also share several athletes in common like long course triathlon pro Andreas Dreitz, so creating a helmet that made their collective athletes faster took on greater importance for both companies. “The Wing 57 was a good baseline for us, but we agreed it was just that—good,” Ballard said. “We wanted this to be great, so we started effectively with a blank sheet of paper.”

To establish a baseline, the Swiss Side team provided Rudy Project a box to work within in terms of helmet length, height, and frontal volume, as well as a virtual and live testing subject: Dreitz. While he’s a front-of pack pro triathlete with wins in top races like the Challenge Roth Triathlon, he was also selected based on a riding style that matched up with most average triathletes; not terribly aggressive, and one who moves his head quite often looking around. “Andreas was a great choice for Rudy Project, as he’s representative of most riders,” Ballard said. “And we knew as a group that we didn’t want a long helmet, for example, as drag goes up as the tail goes up. For triathletes that look around, reach back for bottles and such, it was important to keep the tail short. “If someone like Andreas, or for that matter, most age group triathletes—had a helmet with a long tail, it would be poison.”

Rudy Project and Swiss Side decided that the helmet’s shape would be designed around wind angles between zero and 10 degrees of yaw, agreeing that sustained wind angles outside that range are generally seldom seen.

Beyond those parameters, the sky was the limit.

Rudy Project’s design engineering team lead the charge. With CFD programs at the ready, Rudy Project’s designers created several iterations of a new helmet. Rudy Project sent these 3D iterations to Swiss Side, who did a “virtual” fit and aero test with a virtual Dreitz, who’s head and body had been previously 3D-scanned. Swiss Side put the virtual prototypes on the virtual Dreitz, ran the numbers (testing in CFD in yaw sweeps out to 15 degrees) at wind speeds of 35 and 45 kilometers per hour, and pared the helmet designs down to a couple of true contenders. A handful of prototypes from those contenders were created, which would be packed and travel from Treviso to Immenstaad for the next phase: prototype testing.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of The Wing development story.

USMES, U.S. Military Endurance Sports, supports endurance sports and activities for current, retired, and veteran members of the United States Armed Forces. It began in 2009 as an elite cycling team and has grown into a thriving multi-sport program. Now, USMES supports numerous sports for amateur and elite athletes of all abilities, with roughly 75percent of their members having some type of disability (including disabilities like PTSD, TBI, and hearing loss). These athletes have dedicated themselves to achieving success and overcoming numerous obstacles. While achieving lofty athletic goals, these athletes support others in their local community. USMES members are passionate about promoting their sport, serving their country, and supporting each other.

USMES supports an Elite Athlete Program for athletes competing at the national and international level and Team Chronos, which provides opportunities for regionally influential masters athletes. Athletes from these teams compete at the Olympics and on international circuits, break barriers, and inspire countless others with their determination and positivity. It is this sense of community and camaraderie that these service members rely on to help propel them forward. This Veterans Day, we’d like to highlight a few of the outstanding USMES members.

Photos courtesy of Pactimo / Adam Pawlikiewicz Mesa

Tristan Manderfeld had an outstanding 2019 season with appearances at huge international races. He earned points for Olympic qualification at Fire on Wheels UCI C1 Scratch Race and Points and he finished the season representing the U.S. Armed Forces at the 2019 CISM Military World Games.

As a high school wrestler, he was recruited to West Point. Unfortunately, a back injury prevented him from continuing in the sport. He was immediately drawn to cycling and its unique mental and physical demands. He quickly progressed from Cat 5 to UCI Pro in cyclocross in just over two years. Tristan has lots of big goals for 2021, but is specifically hoping to make the US Olympic team. He is no stranger to taking risks, as his favorite saying goes, “take the risk or lose the chance.” Tristan continues to take those chances and the results speak for themselves. Tristan’s favorite current workout is a “simulated points race on the road with added volume. It consists of one hour at Zone 2 followed by 40 minutes split into eight blocks of three minutes in high Zone 2 then 1:45 at breakaway pace and 15 seconds at an all-out sprint. Repeat.”

In 2007, Adam Popp was injured by an IED in Afghanistan, resulting in the amputation of his right leg above the knee. At the time, he was an Explosive Ordnance Disposal Team Leader and a twelve-year combat veteran of the Air Force with deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Eight years after losing his leg, Adam began running again. In December 2015, Adam became the first above-knee amputee to complete a 100-mile ultramarathon within the 30-hour cutoff. He was the first amputee to finish, and placed second at the 2017 Boston Marathon in the Mobility Impaired Division. He went on to become the first amputee to complete the JFK 50. On November 14th Adam “will be running Tunnel Hill 100-miler in Illinois, with a third attempt at the 100-mile finish, then seven days later I’ll go for my fourth consecutive run at JFK 50-miler.”

Jataya Taylor dreamed of a military career. While serving in the Marine Corp, she was seriously injured in two training accidents. After numerous unsuccessful surgeries, she was diagnosed with a rare connective tissue disorder that prevented her from healing. Jataya was medically retired, which was emotionally devastating. She didn’t give up though. In 2017, she made the decision to have her left leg amputated and began her career as an adaptive athlete. Jataya is now a Paralympic hopeful for Nordic skiing, and also competes at a national level in para cycling and wheelchair basketball. She won the 2018 DAV Freedom Award, for outstanding courage and achievement.

Kelly Elmlinger is a retired Army Captain and the current USA Paratriathlon National Champ. As a combat medic, she was deployed three times, to Iraq and Afghanistan. Tragically, she was diagnosed with synovial sarcoma cancer that ultimately led to the amputation of her leg in 2016. Just three weeks after receiving her run/walk prosthetic, she entered her first triathlon. She was named the Paratriathlon Development Athlete of the year for 2020 by USAT. And Kelly is ready for 2021. Her eyes are set on ITU World Champs and a possible Olympic Team selection. The pandemic has left her with some time to focus on some medical needs and also be present for her kids. Her approach and advice for dealing with COVID-19 is to “hold yourself accountable and to have an outlet to release frustrations and stress.”

Many USMES members are first responders or frontline workers. With COVID-19, that has meant this year has been devoted not to training, but to their first duty—caring for and protecting us all. The stress of a pandemic and isolation has been challenging to say the least, but especially for veterans. To foster community, accountability, and support this year, members have used Zwift and other avenues of virtual meetups and competitions to bring the team together. Others are providing mentorship and increased avenues of support to fight against addictions.

USMES is providing a network of support and community to veteran athletes from amateurs to elites, from active duty to retired, and for all abilities. It is an avenue that no matter the circumstance, they can find a community of support. Rudy Project has been a proud supporter of USMES for many years. Rudy Project has provided gear and created custom-made helmets to support USMES members and its teams as they train and compete. To support the great work of USMES or get involved, visit usmes.org.

Amanda Stevens-Sadler’s professional legacy is remarkable. She was a two-time Olympic Trials qualifier in 2004 and 2008, a leading competitor on the ITU circuit, and in 2013 she won her first Ironman event in Brazil. She was first out of the water at nearly every race she entered. Amanda turned pro in 2003, completed medical school in 2006, broke the nine-hour mark in 2015, and now spends her time as a devoted mom, physician, and coach all during a global pandemic. As COVID-19 spread to affect daily life, Amanda also faced a new paradigm of coaching without races, advocating for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) during the supply shortage, and continuing to treat her patients through it all. Thanks to her long-standing relationship with Rudy Project, she was able to alleviate this one concern and work with increased confidence through it all.

Amanda’s career as a triathlete is exceptional, but so is her professional career. She is a medical doctor who continues to grow and enhance her skills as a clinician. She planned to take this year to complete a sports medicine fellowship. As an endurance athlete and doctor, Amanda is quite familiar with treating chronic and overuse injuries, but this was an opportunity she had planned to get more comfortable with – treating acute injuries. However, 2020 has been far from what any of us expected.

Her sports medicine fellowship typically would have had her on the sidelines and in locker rooms at a variety of sporting events right now, but there is just not a lot of sport going on. Schools like the University of Oklahoma, which is closest to home for Amanda, are playing. However, COVID-19 regulations are strict, so she hasn’t been able to join their games. For the smaller colleges and high schools that are still having regular seasons, Amanda would have been in locker rooms treating injuries and developing return-to-play plans, but instead she is completing COVID-return-to play plans with the athletes.

Why Sports Medicine Now?

Her training as a doctor has been shaped in part due to her own athletic career and her own missed diagnoses. Amanda dealt with gastrointestinal issues throughout much of her early career. She knows that her career as a triathlete could have been different had those issues been solved earlier and treated correctly.

Amanda’s focus has been on primary care and functional medicine. Functional medicine looks at the root cause of a disease from the cellular level to understand its influence on the whole system. She’s hoping to use this knowledge — with the skills of preventive care and wellness refined during this fellowship — to become a more well-rounded clinician. After this fellowship, Amanda hopes to continue her work by helping other athletes become more efficient by evaluating things like their metabolism and known muscular weak spots.

As if being busy as a doctor wasn’t enough, Amanda coaches several athletes and is a mom of two. She has a three-year old and almost nine-month old. Not one to slow down, she swam up until they were born and resumed quickly thereafter. For much of the past decade Amanda has balanced her career as a medical doctor with her career as a professional triathlete and coach. If you talk with Amanda Stevens, you’ll hear this phrase about her philosophy as a working mom, athlete, and coach. “Family first, health second, sport third.” And now more than ever, this philosophy highlights the reality that most athletes have these priorities out of order. For many, sport is first and foremost.

Now that sport (specifically competing) have been canceled, many athletes are using this time to re-evaluate and get their priorities back in order. Her message this year, despite the letdowns of canceled races, is that 2020 training can be a “blessing in disguise” for years to come. She’s emphasized to her athletes that this is the year to build an incredibly healthy, strong base. Having a solid training foundation builds endurance and provides the ability to ramp up as needed when races are back on the schedule with minimal injury risk.

Marshall “Major” Taylor raced track and road cycling events professionally from 1896 until 1910. He was arguably one of the best cyclists in the world during his career. He was the first African American world champion cyclist and the second African American athlete to win a world championship in any sport (Canadian boxer George Dixon, 1892). Just 30 years after the Civil War, Major Taylor found success internationally, and fought not only on the racecourse, but through blatant racism whenever he competed in the U.S. During the 1896 season, Major Taylor unofficially broke a sprint world record on the track, but he was promptly banned from the stadium because of the color of his skin. He received death threats, and regularly faced dirty tricks from individuals or groups of riders leading up to and during races because of the ever-present presence of prejudice. However, his talent and character led him to great success and his efforts have inspired many to pursue their own cycling dreams.

The moment he earned his place on the international level was later in 1896 during the six-day race in Madison Square Garden. Cycling endurance events were extremely popular at the time. The race format was simple - be the one to cover the most laps over the course of six days. Thousands of spectators joined as the event waged on. The latter stages for those few remaining riders often resulted in exhausted riders falling asleep on their bikes and crashing onto the banked wooden track. To be entered in the race, Taylor had to compete in a half mile sprint. He won, beating the star of the time in cycling, Eddie Bald. Taylor ended up finishing eighth, covering 1,732 miles. By the second day, Taylor had covered almost 400 miles, putting him among the top contenders, in his first professional event. He continued to cover anywhere from 200-300 miles a day for the remaining four days of the race. Bikes, nutrition, and hydration were all drastically different realities than anything we can compare to today. Even after a pretty gnarly wreck late in the race, Taylor got back up and finished with all he had. Taylor was just 18, about ten years younger than the other riders.

At the same time in 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in the famous case of Plessy v. Ferguson. The decision declared that separate but equal was ok, institutionalizing Jim Crow laws. Taylor knew the significance of the moment, “In a word I was a pioneer, and therefore, had to blaze my own trail.” Taylor was the only Black rider in a peloton of white. But, he knew that proving his talent during those six days would be the defining moment of his potential career in cycling. And because of his efforts, he became an international phenom.

Over the course of the next decade, Taylor would go on to set more than seven world records. In 1902, he beat the champions of Germany, France, and England, winning 40 out of 57 races. Apart from his racing, he was also a deeply religious man with incredibly principled beliefs. Taylor never raced on Sunday and strongly felt that clean living (avoiding alcohol, drugs, and even candy) were the keys to success as a professional athlete. His popularity was so vast that many international races moved their events from Sunday just so Taylor would compete.

Taylor left cycling for a few years mostly because of the dehumanization and threatening treatment he received while racing and training as a Black cyclist in the U.S. He would show up to train and be turned away because of the color of his skin. He would travel for a race only to receive death threats if he didn’t leave town. He would win a race, but often was placed second by officials. Taylor called this the “dreadful monster prejudice to do extra battle against,” yet still carried little bitterness. Taylor was mentored and promoted by Birdie Munger and befriended several of his competitors over the years through their shared interest in the sport. He prayed that others would “with patience, courage, fortitude and perseverance achieve success for themselves.”

Since its inception over a decade ago, the Major Taylor club and the Major Taylor Iron Riders have honored his legacy and continue to promote the trail he blazed over a century ago.

The Major Taylor Iron Riders (MTIR) were founded in 2006 in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. The name was chosen to honor both Major Taylor and the Fort Missoula Buffalo Soldier 25th  Infantry Bicycle Corps who were referred to as the Iron Riders after they rode 1,900 miles in just 21 days. They were one of four regiments of Black soldiers enacted by Congress in 1866.

Darrell Tucker, Team Leader for the Major Taylor Development team, shared the story of the historical evolution of the team. “In the past 14 years, Major Taylor Iron Riders (MTIR) have grown to secure their position in the NYC cycling community and emerge as one of the most prominent and respected Major Taylor clubs in the United States. With more than 200 members and supporters, the club continues to thrive and expand the demographics of its membership. Today the MTIR peloton is made up of both men and women, teenagers and senior citizens, and individuals from numerous ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds.” It is arguably the most diverse group of riders in the U.S. As Tucker relayed, through Taylor’s story and the mission, “cycling offers us a bridge.” The common interest, the journey towards a goal, and the community created, each contribute to the bridge that can be built between the chasm of race, gender, or opportunity that still exists. JoAnn Caban, a team member since 2017, recently shared her thoughts in a team letter about the significance of this team in our current social context:

MTIR is an evolution of diversity through a shared expression and passion for the sport. It fosters an acceptance of diversity whether it is color, age, style, or socioeconomics. Moreover, it exemplifies minority representation in this sport to the youth of our community and also to the older people of color (who are among the greatest population of unhealthy individuals in the developed world). MTIR introduces them to options for fitness which they would not have otherwise known were possible.

Personally, MTIR represents a population who shares similar personal struggles of diversity that I have faced in my life as a Hispanic woman. MTIR represents strength of character, perseverance of excellence in life, and mental fortitude. It is where I find like minded individuals who know how to ride bikes – at any age!

The MTIR team and the Major Taylor Development Team, have built a community that creates a space for riders to become great riders, the same kind of mentorship that opened the door to Major Taylor’s own career. That’s what the Major Taylor team is all about. That and remaining competitive and elevating each other’s performance, all while creating a path for anyone to get involved in the sport.

A key factor in their ongoing success has been the long-standing relationships the team has forged. Rudy Project has been a proud supporter of the Major Taylor pro team and grassroots associations for more than a decade. Rudy Project has sponsored community efforts through MTIR to remove the common obstacles to entry. Cycling has a very high barrier to entry: bikes are expensive, kits are expensive, helmets are expensive. The high financial barrier to entry has excluded most for a very long time. Rudy Project has sought to help overcome that by providing helmets, and eyewear to some of the Major Taylor teams, which significantly helps reduce the financial burden that exists in order to participate and compete in the sport. Rudy Project has long-held that their sponsored athletes and teams mirror the demographics of our country. Cycling has been an almost exclusively white sport. Major Taylor was the first to change that. And the efforts this team is leading today are not new to them, but an opportunity for us all to have a moment of clarity and see the greater opportunity: to know, support, and elevate all of our neighbors in every pursuit.

To learn more about Major Taylor and the Major Taylor Iron Riders cycling group, go to https://mtir.clubexpress.com/. They welcome anyone regardless of race, creed or gender.