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Chris Froome & Team Sky wear light, airy new Kask Valegro helmet to Tour win

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Kask Valegro lightweight well-vented hot weather race road bike helmet Chris Froome in yellow Tour de France.jpg

The Kask Valegro is the new lightest weight, most ventilated road helmet the Italian company has to offer riders racing through hot summers and up the most grueling mountains. And they had to make up a lot of them in yellow for Team Sky’s July of racing in France. Besides Chris Froome winning the overall at the Tour de France, his Team Sky spent every day after the first stage time trial leading the overall team classification, so they had 19 days of racing with yellow versions of the new helmet. While several riders of Team Sky opted for the more aero Protone for the flatter stages, pretty much everyone opted for the well vented Valegro when the days got hot and the climbs long…

Kask Valegro Team Sky edition

Kask Valegro lightweight well-vented hot weather race road bike helmet Team Sky front

Kask previewed the new Valegro at the Tour de France on the heads of Team Sky, even though it isn’t slated for official launch until later this year ahead of 2018 real world availability.

Kask Valegro lightweight well-vented hot weather race road bike helmet Team Sky side Kask Valegro lightweight well-vented hot weather race road bike helmet Team Sky rear

The key feature of the Valegro is the much improved ventilation over any of their other helmets. With 36 vents in total the Valegro presents a very open grille-like look from the front, moving as much air across the front and top of the head as possible to maximize cooling. It’s a very different approach to the fewer, but larger forward facing vents found on most of Kask’s road helmets, but Kask also says it results in trimmed down weight as well.

Kask Valegro lightweight well-vented hot weather race road bike helmet Team Sky black edition

The Valegro was actually developed in partnership with Team Sky which is why they got an early run of the new helmets. Its design is a direct response to Sky feedback for a hot weather helmet. With the more open grid structure around all of those vents, the Valegro is said to dramatically reduce the real contact area between the rider’s head and helmet pads – by up to 70% over some more conventional designs. That works together with a new 5mm thick breathable & fast wicking pad material that makes the helmet even more comfortable in hot weather. Part of the design optimized for pro riders is the vent design which incorporates locations on both the front & rear of the helmet to easily stow the arms of your favorite sunglasses.

Kask even claims that it performs well in the wind tunnel, adapting aero tech from their Infinity & Bambino Pro helmets to both maximize cooling efficiency and result in low drag as well.

Kask Valegro lightweight well-vented hot weather race road bike helmet Chris Froome & Team Sky in yellow Tour de France

Claimed weight for the open structure Valegro is just 180g, making it one of the lightest road helmets available, taking advantage of some new reinforcement tech and a new in-molding method that we might learn more about when the helmet is official unveiled.

Kask.com

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FarkLifer
FarkLifer
6 years ago

They better get creative with paint designs because that helmet looks horrific in one color (see the yellow). The Protone is one of the best looking helmets ever.

BrainDamageAintSoBad
BrainDamageAintSoBad
6 years ago

Is this basically the ‘minimum’ required helmet for pro riders? At the expense of safety?

tv
tv
6 years ago

gone full circle again. For years, top of the range helmets were light weight and well ventilated, like my trusty old Giro Atmos at 190g. Then somehow it became acceptable to pay £200 for a pig ugly 300g helmet because AERO. And now we are back to lightweight again.

Carl
Carl
6 years ago
Reply to  tv

I think we can thank Giro for that, figuring out that you can make a smoother and more aero helmet with some well placed vents and air channels. #aeroiseverything so who cares about weight…or cooling? Until riders start spending hours cranking up a climb and realize you need to be moving for those helmets to work. I recently bought a Protone and found out the hard way just how much cooling is lost on slow and exposed climbs.

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