I don’t know if this qualifies for a GQ, but why in the Tour De France the riders wear helmets sometimes, but in pictures of them finishing stage 15 none of the riders are wearing helmets? I would think in that kind of race, with the speeds they do and the close proximity of nearby riders, they would wear them all the time?
I wear my bike helmet all the time, but I notice that maybe 30% of other riders I run into on trails and stuff are wearing them. Kids will usually have them on, but adults - hardly ever!
I just thought that when bike racing, a helmet was a must-have thing.
Before this year helmets were completely optional; until recently the mindset amongst professional bicyclists was that safety gear was somehow “impure”. I’m not sure on the reasoning behind that, perhaps someone like Boo Boo Foo could clarify it.
Anyway, since early this year helmets have been compulsory in all professional races … mostly. I’m guessing that when the race hits an uphill part of a stage that ends going uphill (i.e., there are no more perilous downhills that follow), then the riders may toss aside their helmets, as happened today on stage 15.
If you’d like some details on what prompted the requirement, google on “Andrei Kivilev”.
The UCI requires the use of helmets for all races, except for the last part of a stage which finishes as a uphill finish (like today’s stage). The uphill finish exception was added by the request of the riders, and they are going much slower on the painful uphill mtn finishes.
The UCI had tried to require helmets before but a rider protest had prevented it. After the highly preventable death of Krivilev, the rider sentiment changed for the most part and the UCI was able to quickly put the helmet requirement in place (it didn’t hurt that the helmet sponsors were very pleased when their sponsored teams did not fight it).
Riders hit 50 MPH plus on the long down hill, riding without a helmet is insanity to me. I always were mine. Always.
To add to my post- they only shed the helmets at the base of the last climb. Although given Lance’s fall thanks to a dumbass fan today, maybe he should have left his helmet on.
I can’t remember exactly where I read this, but one reason pro racers don’t (or didn’t) wear helmets is that a race course is generally a controlled environment. By that I mean there aren’t the usual impediments to safe cycling - traffic, jaywalking pedestrians, terrible road conditions, cars pulling onto the roadway without looking, those sorts of things. Also, although helmets have vents, they can still make a hot situation hotter, so on climbs or long boring stratches in the hot sun riders would typically take off their helmets, then put them on for descents and sprint finishes where there is either high speed or greater chance of collision with other riders, or both.