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POC Sports Tempor TT Helmet Spotted, Debuts in Olympic Time Trial

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The partial image above is POC Sports’ first foray into road bike helmets. It’s called Tempor, and it’s a TT aero helmet that’ll debut during the men’s and women’s time trials at the London 2012 Olympics.

Swedish women’s cyclists Emma Johansson and Emilia Fahlin were spotted wearing it just before the event (pic after the break), and Wednesday will see them and Beijing Silver Medalist Gustav Larson wearing it during competition. Details should come just after the event, but POC’s staff told us safety was every bit as important as aerodynamics.

UPDATE: The product is now live on POC’s website here, additional details & photos added below!

The shape is absolutely unique among recent introductions from other big players and was reportedly designed to maximize slipperiness in the riding position.

Click image to enlarge for detail.

Photo: MyNewsDesk / Swedish Cycling Federation

Women’s TT starts at 12:30 London time Wednesday, men’s follows. More info and images as we get them.

PRESS RELEASE: As a first step towards the Road Bike scene, POC has developed the Tempor Time Trial helmet together with POC Lab and aerodynamic specialists at Semcon. The Road Bike products are planned to evolve into one of the most important product categories for POC.

With POC´s mission of “doing the best we can to possibly save lives and to reduce the consequences of accidents for gravity sport athletes”, and in this case without compromising aerodynamics, the challenge was clear. The Tempor helmet is developed to promote maximum performance and aerodynamics, without sacrificing safety properties.

POC´s new conceptual approach to optimize aerodynamics and speed was to view the rider as one body mass, rather than isolating the head from the rest of the body. Simultaneously with this new approach, energy absorbing material has been added where most needed to increase the rider´s safety.

By involving aerodynamic specialists from Semcon, POC has been tweaking and fine-tuning. With field testing and extensive simulations including advanced aerodynamics and kinetics, the shape has been refined and ultimately adapted to integrate perfectly with the professional bike racer´s position on the bike. In the quest for optimization, the simulations done, counts to more than 60 billion single projections. The amount of data processing and nodes used corresponds to about 20% of what’s used in the most sophisticated aerodynamic projections for Formula-1 cars. And this is just a single helmet, compared to a whole car. The result is amazing with superior performance, both when it comes to safety and speed. How much better? We thought we´d let people guess before officially announcing it.

“We are extremely excited, enthusiastic and humble moving in to the Road Bike Scene. It´s a category that we deliberately put on hold until we had the time and capacity. Both this first Time Trial helmet Tempor, as well as other products in process to come, are projects where we have been able to invest more in than ever before.” says Stefan Ytterborn, Founder and CEO POC.

Thanks to Johan for the tip!

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3PO
3PO
12 years ago

That looks like…uhhmm… The tip of something else that “maximize slipperiness in the riding position.” Sorry but that’s my first impression.

Gillis
Gillis
12 years ago

from the front it looks like a Pac-Man ghost is eating her head

Spencer
Spencer
12 years ago

Ha! Yeah it does!

jdog
jdog
12 years ago

Wonderful design.

I loathe most things TT or Tri, but I love the lines of this.

Eric NM
Eric NM
12 years ago

Umm…I really, really hate to tell POC this, but, uh…(boy, this is uncomfortable…), but, um…it looks like a glans.

Yikes.

cx_monkey
cx_monkey
12 years ago

quite possibly the ugliest thing I have ever seen.

But – I guess TT isn’t a fashion parade, and if it’s a quicker piece of kit, then all good. Be interesting to see numbers to prove it though – seems to spit in the face of what the other guys are doing though – Kask covering up air intakes for a more slippery shape on Sky road helmets – then POC put 2 enormous scoops right on the front of this one. I’m not a fluid dynamics guy so I wouldn’t know – but I’d guess that without some scientific fact backing it up, laymen like me wouldn’t think it would work?

Evan
Evan
12 years ago

@ cx, completely agree with comments about aero-ness of the Poc, and there’s no telling how much drag the bill shaped tail would produce when the rider puts their head down, which many do. And Emilia Fahlin is incredibly hot.

Hungry4Shht
Hungry4Shht
12 years ago

Well, the one positive to take away from this is that POC seems to be entering the road market.

Trond
Trond
12 years ago

It’s Spaceballs all over! May the Schwartz be with the Swedish team.

sirbikealot
12 years ago

The air vents are specifically designed to eliminate the dead spot that all helmets have at the front, this would create a venturi effect taking that dead air and funneling it through and out the back of the helmet.

Large tails at the back of the helmet are a problem when heads are raised up but smaller tails still create much better air flow than a snub nose back.

POC used over 60 billion projections to finalize this helmet (F1 engineers generally use a minimum of 20 million for their whole cars)

The word on the street is that this helmet is 40 seconds faster over 40km under Gustav Larson (reigning silver medalist) than the next fastest helmet on the market

Mjohnson
Mjohnson
12 years ago

40 sec off a 40km over the next fastest helmet? I completely call BS.

Matt Holland
Matt Holland
12 years ago

Funny that it gets slammed by Hoy when it debuts at the Mens TT. I think it looks smart, it has the chines of the SR-71

Wally
Wally
12 years ago

Makes the riders look like the character “Dumb Donald” from the Fat Albert cartoon. Here’s a pic for those who don’t remember that Saturday morning cartoon. http://fatalbert.wikia.com/wiki/Dumb_Donald

norm
norm
12 years ago

Reminiscent of the scrubbing bubbles bathroom cleaner ads.

satisFACTORYrider
satisFACTORYrider
12 years ago

@Wally – truth. .. it reminds me of tim burton’s “attack of the oompaloompa zombie robots”. i do love my POC pisspot lids though for bike,skate and snow

Jake
Jake
12 years ago

Rick Moranis, Lord Dark Helmet, Space Balls? I’m surprised that its legal. They make so much fuss about every other aspect ratio, ah well.

cx_monkey
cx_monkey
12 years ago

@ sirbikealot – not going to argue with you about the venturi effect – I really wouldn’t know. But you got the projection number the wrong way around – 60 billion is apparently about 20% of the projections used for an F1 car.

@ Evan – agreed, she is hot. just not in that helmet ;o)

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