We caught up with Ben as he recovers from a recent crash while training in California.

Ben King reaches out to the crowd as he approaches the finish of Stage Four of the USA Pro Challenge from Aspen to Beaver Creek on August 23, 2012 in Beaver Creek, Colorado. (photo Garrett Ellwood/Getty Images)

Luke Allingham: Ben, it has been a tough week for you with not being able to start the Tour of California due to injuries from a recent crash. Tell us about the crash, and what injuries you’ve sustained from it.

Ben King:

I crashed on a technical decent. It was as though the corner was greased. I was leaning into the corner and sliding on my hip the next moment. I got a lot of road rash on my hip, but the worst is the damage to my palms, which prevents me from holding the bars.

LA: What does it mean for you to miss the Tour of California? It’s considered to be one of the biggest races on US soil.

BK:

I’m most disappointed to abandon the team before battle. Plus I miss out on interacting with the US Cycling fans. A race like Cali brings them the action that they ordinarily have to watch on TV or read about. I enjoy meeting them. It’s motivating.

LA: What are your thoughts on the extreme heat that riders in California experienced during the first two stages? Do you think that Stage 2 should have been called off due to the extreme temperatures?

BK:

It was a winter of cold and rain for most guys. I wasn’t in Cali but I can imagine what a shock that heat was for the riders. Amstel Gold was my first race in the heat this year and I cramped hard. This is a brutal sport, but cancel the race? No. It’s not the same as icy roads.

LA: I understand that you’re now at home recovering from this recent crash. Do you know when you’ll be able to return to racing? The US National Road Championships are being held in a few weeks, do you think you’ll be able to participate?

BK:

I haven’t made a decision on the championships next weekend. I’ve taken a week off and am still healing. But it would be valuable to get some experience on the new course and in a race anything can happen. I learned that in 2010!

LA: As we look into the remaining part of this season, do you know what races you could potentially be taking part in? What will be your goals for the remainder of the season?

BK:

I would like to be selected for the Vuelta Espana. The team has given me a good program to build up for either that or Tour of Colorado.

LA: How do you feel about your season so far up to this point?

BK:

It was a tough winter. Cold and wet. I trained without a rain jacket only like four days in Tuscany. I literally had a vitamin D deficiency, which can cause depression. So, mentally I’m enjoying the rest this week. I hadn’t seen my family or friends for four months. But I’ve been able to do some great races in Europe. I’m still living the dream.

LA: You’re currently racing for the RadioShack-Leopard squad. Tell us about the overall team atmosphere, as an insider, such as at a team dinner, or on the team bus.

BK:

We are often one of the first and last teams in the dining hall just chatting and enjoying each other’s company. It’s a diverse yet inclusive group with some big personalities. Dancing is not uncommon on the team bus. The atmosphere amongst the riders and staff is excellent.

LA: What’s it like to have guys such as Andy Schleck, who is an accomplished Grand Tour competitor, and Jens Voigt, who is an accomplished cycling figure? Does it add any pressure when having guys with those types of accomplishments?

BK:

It doesn’t add negative pressure. Even those guys need a team to win… well, maybe not Jens, but it’s encouraging and motivating to work for and with them. It’s a privilege and honor to be their teammates.

LA: After struggling for some amount of time, Andy Schleck’s form appears to be on the rise at the Tour of California. What does that mean to the team as we move further into the season, and specifically, towards the Tour in July?

BK:

Andy took a lot of criticism at the beginning of this season. It is easy for people to talk from their couches and forget that Andy broke his pelvis less than a year ago, not to mention the drama with his brother. Andy has a great attitude and is always so positive and happy that people might think that he doesn’t care or take his job seriously. We aren’t robots. I admire Andy’s optimism in the face of his struggle to get back to form. He loves this sport and does work hard. He started from scratch this season and has been remarkably stronger at each race. He has so much talent that he reaches a point of fitness where most of us level off but he continues to improve.

LA: What are your thoughts on Bob Jungels, who is the neo-pro on the squad this year?

BK:

Bob’s legs speak for themselves. He’s the youngest guy on our team but isn’t looking for any kind of crutch. He had our first team win aside from Hayden’s Kiwi championship victory. I think he’s also been top ten in every TT he’s done this year.

LA: Who do you consider to be the best roommate on the team? Why?

BK:

The directors assign our roommates, which is fine because I get along with everyone on the team.

LA: What would you consider to be some normal topics of discussion in the peloton currently, or generally?

BK:

The weather, the race itself, our race programs. A lot of those conversations are boring, but each of us has a life outside of cycling. So we talk about family life, girls, hobbies, travel, you name it.

LA: What are your thoughts on the Giro so far? Who is your current favorite for the overall?

BK:

Nibali looks very in control. I can back an Italian for his national race. But they’ve already lost a few favorites thanks to the epic conditions. It’s not over yet.

LA:  Outside of riding the bike, what are some of your hobbies that you enjoy doing?

BK:

I love the outdoors. I like hunting and fishing, archery, snowboarding, hiking, and a lot of other adventures. I like to write, and I bought a guitar for the rainy days in Tuscany.

LA: If a fan wants to follow your life while racing over in Europe, how would they be able to keep up with what you’re doing?

BK:

My Twitter account is the best way. @benking89. I also have a fan page on Facebook, which I aim to update more frequently. Even if I don’t respond all the time, I appreciate all fan interaction. It can be a lonely lifestyle at times!

LA: Is there anything else you’d like to mention in this interview? (Important news, upcoming events involving you, a shout out to someone special, etc.)

BK:

Nothing that isn’t too random comes to mind.

Don’t get a big head, Ben! One of Ben’s biggest fans is his little sister. (Photo from Ben King’s Facebook page)

Here is a link list for all articles referenced during this interview: Bicycling Magazine: Watch Out Rio Bicycyling Magazine: Afghan Cycling Federation NYTimes: Shannon Galpin Has a Mission Putting Afghans on Bikes DailyNightly NBC News: Teenage Cycling Prodigy Leads Afghan Women to New Freedoms

Here is our conversation. All emphasis is mine.

Afghan Women’s Team ride. Photo by Shannon Galpin

Bikezilla (Bz):

From photos and videos I’ve noticed a few things about the team’s equipment and gear: the girls are riding a mix of bikes, not just different brands but different types of bikes (road and MTB, articles mention cruisers); the women and the men both have a mixed bag of uniforms on; one article that I read (I forget which one at the moment) mentions you bringing a “room full of high end bikes”; the women ride without gloves. Some of those things would not be acceptable even to many mere club riders in other countries. What are your thoughts on this? What do the women on the team think about their gear and equipment?

Shannon Galpin (SG):

“None of the girls own their own bikes. The coach has a collection of random bikes, mountain and road, old and older, some with kickstands, all heavy as hell. They are grateful for any support and equipment they can get. We brought over 5 racing bikes donated by Liv/giant, and will have another 7 to bring over this fall so that the girls can start training and racing on lighter, more race specific bikes. We also brought over 350 pounds of clothing and gear for the men’s and women’s teams: clothing, helmets, shoes, socks, gloves, etc. to start getting the teams into proper cycling attire.”

Bz: With it being noted that Afghanistan’s roads are generally not in excellent condition, how do those high-end bikes hold up? How do they get repaired or replaced when carbon fiber parts crack or break? Would high quality steel frame bikes be helpful for training?

SG:

“The high end bikes will mostly be used for racing, as there is not a safe way to transport them around Afghanistan for daily/weekly training. There are no bike racks, and no minibus, so in order to protect them, they are for specific training days and racing until we can solve that problem. They need a fleet of steel road bikes that we could donate to the girls and boys directly, not to the federation, so that they each have a bike to train on and keep at home.”

Bz: It seems that, despite the generosity of bike shops, bike manufacturers and gear manufacturers, that equipment and gear are a very precious commodity. What are the team’s needs, not only immediately, but ongoing?

SG:

“At this point, it’s ground zero. They need indoor trainers, they need bikes, ideally steel racing bikes that can take a beating for training in Afghanistan, they need helmets, spd pedals and cleats, shoes, gloves, chamois, chamois cream, hydration and nutrition supplements. The biggest barrier is transportation due to the security and logistical limitations – so we are trying to raise money to rent or buy a minibus for the team that could carry the girls and their bikes safely around Afghanistan for training. This is by far their biggest need. But most of all they need coaching, training and nutrition development, and funding to help support travel and racing.”

Bz: There’s a quote in the NBC videos, “… winning medals and regional competitions.” In a Bicycling Magazine photo some of those medals can be seen. What and where are these competitions?

SG:

“So far the team has competed in Pakistan and India.  Regional races and at the Asia Games in India.”

Bz: Who does the team compete against?

SG:

“They are regional competitors of Pakistan and India – both of which are similar in skill level. The Asia Games has over 40 countries in the region competing.”

Bz: Who are their greatest rivals (names, teams and countries)?

SG:

“Malayasia and Kazakastan are strong Asia competitors. They have strong cycling programs and competitive cyclists which serve as an example to the Afghan women as to what competitive cycling looks like. In the region they (the Afghan team: Bz) are in a similar field of development as Pakistan which is just seeing women on bikes as well.”

Bz: Who is the best GC rider, the best climber and the best sprinter on the team?

SG:

“They are all similar riding levels, the best riders on the team are Nazifa, Sadaf, Maryam, and Farzana… but that’s more about their overall endurance. They are literally the first women to competitively ride bikes, and many of them have only been riding for a year or two. “They are building up their strength, and their endurance, as well as basic bike handling skills. None of them are even riding in clipless pedals yet. This is about witnessing the beginning of a sport.”

A team ride being led by Nazifa. Photo by Claudia Lopez.

Bz: Which two girls are the the most competitive with each other?

SG:

“They aren’t competitive with each other at this point. It’s a lot of camaraderie, and their focus is more about getting more girls and women on bikes and building up more teams, and more riders.”

Bz: What are the toughest climbs in the area (name, location, % grade, distance).

SG:

“I don’t want to talk about locations due to security. I wouldn’t know the name or grade either unless I went out and measured them.”

Bz:   Ok, that’s fair and makes sense.   Do the women’s teams based in India and Pakistan struggle with the same issues as the women in Afghanistan? How long have those teams been established? Are there more regional women’s teams forming or attempting to form?

SG:

“The girls in Pakistan are in a similar situation as those in Afghanistan from a cultural stand point – although without the additional logistical issues of security and infrastructure. “A woman in Karachi (Pakistan: Bz) has reached out to me interested in starting up a bike team, and it’s definitely inspiring to see women in countries that have long considered cycling taboo or culturally offensive taking up the sport and changing the perception of women and athletes in their countries and throughout the world.”

Bz: A Bicycling Magazine article mentions that the women’s team trains “biweekly” (another BM article states that the men’s team practices 3 days per week). Is that correct, the women only get to train on the road once every two weeks? How do they manage to prepare for their race schedule and perform so well (winning medals) on such a meager training schedule?

SG:

“They train once or twice a week, working around school schedules, and the logistics of having to have the coach pick them and their bikes up and take them to the ride location. They are not able to train solo or with their teammates due to security, so one option is indoor trainers, which is something we are working to get them more of for the next equipment donation. “Indoor cycling is the best option to bump up their training as security, logistics, and timing all works against more outdoor cycling at this point in time.”

Shannon Galpin and Coach Abdul Sadiq “fist bumping.” Photo by Sarah Menzies.

Bz: According to a Bicycling Magazine article, Coach Abdul Saddiqi‘s daughter, Benafscha, at age 13 won her first cycling race riding a cruiser. Not a road bike, not even a MTB, but a cruiser, and likely a used Chinese “down brand” cruiser. Do the girls still ever have to ride these bikes? Race on them?

SG:

“Most of the girls ride on these kind of bikes. Literally old steel bikes with kickstands. They race on them too, although that will change now with the Liv/giant donation and support.”

Bz: American and European teams, even at the Continental level, often have bikes for training and bikes for racing, or ready replacement bikes should something go wrong. How does the bike situation of the Afghan National Women’s Team compare to that?

SG:

“They have whatever bike the coach or the cycling federation has for them to ride, and if it breaks down during a race, the mechanic tries to repair it. We have a wheel sponsor with Inertia Racing Technology that is going to send over wheel sets for the men’s and women’s team which will make a huge difference, but it’s still a matter of getting the men’s and women’s team decent training equipment and backup racing equipment.”

Bz: Now that the women have their passports, is there any chance that some of them might be invited to train or even race with teams in other countries and continents (the U.S.? Australia? Europe?)?

SG:

“Yes, this is something we are working on – to help with team development, but more importantly with coaching and training development so that the teams can improve organically and sustainably over the upcoming years.”

Bz: Could you tell me what teams or countries you’re working with or considering for this?

SG:

“We are looking into several options for the team – US, Europe, Iran are all options – the difficulty lays with visas and funding.”

Bz: How many women are on the team?

SG:

“The national team has 8-10 women. There are three regional teams in Afghanistan as well, teams of girls and young women. Forty-eight to fifty are registered, that are riding their bikes as part of the federation in hopes of building more exposure to women about cycling in Afghanistan and to develop more depth of riders for the national team. Due to logistics, right now the national team is made up of Kabul based riders plus one from a neighboring province of Parwan.”

Bz: How many women have tried out to make the team?

SG:

“Most girls that want to ride, are allowed a place on the local team, the numbers are incredibly small.”

Bz: How do these women hear about the team and about openings?

SG:

“Finding out about the team, its totally random and organic, there is no specific ‘call to action’.  One girl literally found out from a client at the beauty shop she works at.” 

Bz: A Bicycling Magazine article mentions boys of 9 and 12 years old repairing bikes professionally. Who repairs the team’s bikes? How old are the team’s mechanics? What their personal and professional backgrounds?

SG:

“There is a team mechanic, a friend of the coach that repairs the team’s bikes. But in town, you can go to nearly any street and find a ‘bike shop’ where you could fix a bike.”

AWT team mechanic shaking hands with Ky Hunter, the woman sent by Liv/giant to assemble the donated race bikes and help out as a bike mechanic. Photo by Shannon Galpin.

Bz: Are the girls becoming able bike mechanics, too, out of necessity?

SG:

“They are not, but its something I would like to see change out of necessity and to make them more self confident on the bike.”

Thank you, Shannon.

END Part 1

To contact Shannon Galpin or to donate to the Afghan Women’s Team:

Shannon Galpin

www.shannongalpin.com

SGalpin@me.com

Mountain2Mountain

www.mountain2mountain.org

PO Box 7399, Breckenridge, CO 80424

Twitter:  @Mtn2Mtn @sgalpin

(The interview in its entirety can be read on the free iPad magazine app 2r. To learn more about the project, visit the website: http://2rmag.com/)

A Gitane advertisement featuring the newly-crowned World Champ

 

The first time I ever saw Greg LeMond was on September 4, 1983. I am precise about the date, because he had just won his first World Road Race title championships in Altenrhein, Switzerland, and I was watching from the pit-lane. The day before, I had finished a distant seventy-something in the amateur race – a sobering experience – but the silver lining was a chance to watch the pros. That we (the Ireland amateur team) had spent most of the week in the same hotel as Sean Kelly was another bonus. We all hoped one day to be Kelly, and all hoped one day to be Stephen Roche – they were real, touchable – but we, or at least I, never aspired to be LeMond. His talent was simply off the scales. He was barely one year older than me but had already secured a ‘palmarès’ to dream of: World Junior Road Race Champion 1979, Tour de l’Avenir Winner 1982 (he had beaten Robert Millar by a staggering ten minutes), Critérium du Dauphiné Winner 1983, and now, stupendously, the World Professional Road Race Champion. If someone had told me that afternoon, that three years later we would race the Tour de France together, I’d have been the happiest man in the world. But if I had known about him then, what I know about him now, I might have put away my bike and never raced again…

Paul: There’s a passage in a book (The Incredible Comeback) Sam Abt once wrote about you, where you are railing against the European traditions of diet and training. Sean Kelly was the classic disciple of that tradition and you are quoted as saying that Kelly wouldn’t make love for six weeks before a race. You also say that you had once made love the night before…

Greg: The World Championships.

Kathy: Yeah.

Greg: And the Tour de France

Kathy: Oh, yeah.

Greg: Every time we saw each other we’d have sex.

Kathy: Guimard used to follow us back down to Greg’s room. One time he refused to leave us alone.

Greg: I could never figure that out: ‘How could that be bad? Is there a scientific basis for not having sex?’ And there was nothing. It was a cycling myth.

Kathy: Actually, I think it’s good mentally. The night before you won the Worlds, you got up so early to eat your meal three hours before, and you were so nervous, so of course we had sex that morning actually. Then he goes over there and…

Before Altenrhein?

Kathy: Yes.

You had sex before the World Championships in Altenrhein?

Kathy (laughs): Yes.

Christ! That’s unbelievable!

Greg (erupts): You were the one that reckoned Kelly’s wife was a virgin!

No, that was my brother, actually.

Greg: We always laughed when we invited Sean Kelly to dinner.

Kathy: He never came.

Greg: We’d invite him to dinner at seven-thirty or eight and he’d say okay. He didn’t know how to say no, so his wife would call-up later and say ‘No, we can’t make it. Sean will be in bed by eight.’ But I kind of admired Sean in that…he just did his job. I admired his quiet (demeanour): ‘Don’t talk, just do.’ I would watch Hinault and Fignon shouting about attacking and dropping everybody but that means you don’t really respect your competitors. I mean, how do you know? I would never do that.

Fignon had a lot of respect for Kelly, too.

Yeah, because Kelly was…he was another guy I felt bad about for winning the Worlds. I said ‘I’ll trade you a Paris-Roubaix for that.’

You said that to him?

Yeah.

And he would definitely have traded – Worlds was the race he most wanted to win. The only time I ever saw him crying was after you beat him in Chambery (where the 1989 World Championships were held).

Greg: Ohhhhh

Kathy: We knew it meant a lot to him. We actually did feel bad.

Greg: I’ll tell you one story though…I had Moreno Argentin (ask me) for 10,000 dollars (in 1984 at the World Road Race in Barcelona) and I was like ‘Fuck! I would never, ever pay for a victory, ever. I would not accept money from somebody…I had to learn that there was a culture in cycling where arrangements were made. In ’86, I attacked on the Poggio in Milan-San Remo. (Mario) Beccia is just in front but I attack from the group and Kelly just bridges over the top. I go down the descent (makes a rocket noise) and I’m going good. And I know Kelly had beaten me in the Tour of Lombardy (in ’83) but it was only by a little…

Yeah, I remember, he beat you by a whisker.

We go down and come out and there is 1 k to go and I hear (adopts high pitched squeak) “Fifteen thousand…Eighteen thousand…Twenty thousand.” He’s offering me twenty thousand dollars if I don’t sprint! And I’m like ‘What! Fuck you!’ I think I said ‘Fuck you.’ And I don’t know if I led it (the sprint) out…I think I led it out and he got a jump and I was second. But that was the first time I had ever been offered money except for the kermesses.

It’s probably the only time in his entire career that he ever offered anyone money.

(He laughs)

I’m serious! It’s probably the best compliment you’ve ever been paid.

I never thought of it like that. Do you know what my team-mate said when I got back? He said ‘What the fuck! Are you an idiot? You knew you weren’t going to beat him in the sprint – take the money. And in the next race, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, you have some money to buy somebody else off!’ Isn’t that crazy?

(Note: After the interview with LeMond, I had the following conversation with Kelly about the race.)

“Greg LeMond has said that you tried to buy Milan-San Remo from him in 1986?”

“I tried to buy it from him?”

“Well, you made him an offer?”

“Don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember?”

“No, I don’t remember making him an offer but he said to me ‘I’d like to win,’ or ‘I want to win,’ something like that. And then it went on from there. I think that was getting…I’m not sure if that was before the descent or after the descent.”

“So was he making you an offer?”

“Well, he was the one that said to me ‘I’d like to win’ or ‘I want to win’ something like that.”

“But you definitely didn’t say it to him?”

“Well, I said ‘I also want to win,’ I think was my answer.”

“Did that go on a lot?”

“Did it go on a lot?”

“Yeah, these discussions.”

“On that race?”

“No, generally.”

“Well, yeah.”

“They did?”

“Yeah…in my time, there were discussions and certainly agreements. During my career there were some agreements.”

Read the full article on 2r, download here

If you like this interview by Paul Kimmage, you’re going to love what’s in store for Cyclismas fans in the future.

Kimmage has signed on with us to do The Big Interview with Paul Kimmage, a one hour in-depth video interview show to be broadcast on Cyclismas and on Kimmage’s own website. In addition, a new Cyclismas website with improved functions, ease of use, and other features will be unveiled in March, with the first Kimmage show to be broadcast shortly after the Tour de France, where the Cyclismas crew will be on hand for the historic 100th edition of the storied Grand Boucle.

As Operations Director Aaron Brown told Carlton Reid of BikeBiz, “Paul’s ability to interview one-on-one is unmatched in cycling and he provides an incredible platform for cycling fans to discover more about their favourite stars in the sport. We’ll be creating two hours of high quality content each month.”

Stay tuned…

* * * * *

@sarcastitom Dude, I am Jedi at that shit.

— Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) August 1, 2012

You know what I mean by “non-denial denial”.  In cycling, for better or worse, we’ve seen scores of them.  Especially since Floyd (Landis, not the barber or Abrams) spilled his guts about his old friends and teammates.  For example, there’s George Hincapie’s statement:

“I have been a professional on the circuit for 17 years — which is one of the longest careers in the peloton. During that time, I have earned the respect of my peers and a reputation for working hard, honestly and honorably,”

But George didn’t actually deny doping. He knows that and we know that and he knows that we know that. (I swear that’s grammatically correct).  It serves for most of us as tacit acknowledgement of his past.  But it leaves us as satisfied as a eunuch in a whorehouse. A couple of days ago, Vaughters did the opposite. He talked extensively about his (way past alleged but still not totally explicit) doping history without ever actually admitting to anything.  It started off with this innocent little incendiary device:

I wonder if anyone is curious as to why I quit racing at 29, and walked away from the last 2 yrs of a pretty phat contract? Must be crazy.. — Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) July 31, 2012

Stir the pot, JV.  Ostensibly when he retired he said it was to spend more time with his family.  Not to say that’s not true – his son Charlie was just toddling I believe – but it’s pretty rare that family is a reason all by itself.  “I want to spend more time with my family [and by the way my job is worse than self-impalement]”, or “I want to spend more time with my family [so the indictment doesn’t harm the company]” or something like that.  And obviously since he’s asked the question he’s not going to just say “for the family” and move on to shaving his sideburns into an argyle pattern. What followed can best be described as a Twitter interview.  Vaughters is known for his openness, but over the next several hours he answered questions with a frankness and general lack of dick jokes that surely meant he’d run out of wine.  So for the sake of maintaining a historical record, or perhaps just because I need to get a life, I’ve tried to present it all here. I went chronologically and weeded out some excess JV fluffing, because who wants to see that?

@jforbes004 Thanks, but I never regretted my decision. — Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) July 31, 2012

OK, that was JV-fluffing, but it’s nice to know he’s happy with his choice.

@swisssinclair If an injury is being physiologically scarred, then yes.

— Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) July 31, 2012

And according to his bio at SlipstreamSports.com:

In 2003, at only 30 years old, Jonathan decided to step away from a successful, but tough professional cycling career. He was perhaps young to retire, but clearly had maximized his abilities at a somewhat earlier age than most through ground-breaking training techniques, and extreme focus.

“…ground-breaking training techniques”?  Don’t worry, he’s not nearly so evasive as you get farther into this.

@vivavelo No, no… That wouldn’t address my own demons sufficiently.

— Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) July 31, 2012

(And no denial of seeing others dope. Not a surprise, just sayin’.)

@fmk_roi No… Kimmage knows the full story. But it was never part of our formal interview. — Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) July 31, 2012

When I was younger I didn’t get that people like Kimmage who love to rattle their sabers aren’t doing it solely because it makes their sabers feel so good.  Their sabers are aroused because they’ve been privy to a dopers’ peep show that would curl a meth addict’s toes.

@bjbbiker 500,000euro per year. — Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) July 31, 2012

For comparison, when Landis left USPS at $230,000, he was hired by Phonak for $500,000 (probably Euros, but not positive).  I guess JV was more than just a pretty face with bee sting scars.

@farts4lance @laura_weislo @broomwagonblog @fmk_roi @sarcastitom @vivavelo No, I think I will.

— Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) July 31, 2012

At which point some asshat on Twitter promptly made a snarky comment about JV having a book deal.  Oh wait, that was me.  Never mind.

@susanswarbrick Yes, a bit of that, for sure.

— Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) July 31, 2012

No JV, she said “penance” not “Penzance.” We know how he loves musicals.

@scalaresorpasso No, NO…. Credit Agricole was a clean team. Roger Legaey gave me the license to ride clean, even if it was a bit slower.. — Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) July 31, 2012

His staunch defense of both Agricole and Legaey comes up a few more times.

@propheteer1 Or dope and win, but then stop doping and stop winning… then realize it’s a big game, and not play anymore. — Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) July 31, 2012

His beating about the bush is getting steadily closer to the bush.  Dude, close the deal.

@andrew317 No… Not from Credit Agricole. But I got tired of disappointing them.

— Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) July 31, 2012

Credit where Credit is due I suppose.

@getoffthesofa No… I should get on that.

— Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) July 31, 2012

What’s the holdup?  It’s not like you need anybody’s Tygart’s permission to do that.

@jmbeaushrimp Close.. I had immense respect for Roger Legeay. Was a bit tired of disappointing him. 2 ways to stop disappointing him. — Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) July 31, 2012

Ok already. Did Roger or Agricole sponsor your book deal or something?  And that’s the second time you’ve mentioned disappointing them.  Sounds a little slavish.

@cokesdonegal Legaey knew I would be limited in some ways. from the day he signed me. Love that guy. But I didn’t like letting him down. — Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) July 31, 2012

@cokesdonegalBetter to walk away, than walk back into the mess….or continue to let down people you respect.

— Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) July 31, 2012

This is the bringing us pretty close to an answer for his original question.  And yes, we really get that you were very eager to please them.  What was your safe word?

@foxmia1971 Not management at credit Agricole. Absolutely not. But more pressure from within.

— Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) July 31, 2012

Are  you trying to tell us something about how you feel about Credit Agricole?  I’m still not quite getting it.  And no, folks, for once “pressure from within” is not some kind of innuendo.

@orcyclingaction Totally agree. “Everyone dopes, so it’s fair” is a crap argument on many levels….cultural morals, different physiologies — Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) July 31, 2012

He’s talked about this before, not really a surprise.  The next one’s quite a bit more interesting:

@frstback Tried? I’m no puritan. sometimes you have to step away from a bad situation as opposed to always getting twisted up in the choices — Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) July 31, 2012

Man.  It’s so hard to read between the lines here, JV.  You’re being so vague.  Does the puritan comment mean you slept your way to the top?  I’m just so confused. Yes, it’s not exactly news.  He’s made it pretty clear in the past that he’s used “product” that’s way beyond hair gel, but this is certainly one of the better examples of him talking about his doping very plainly but without the actual words “I doped.”

My team from 2000-retirement was credt agricole. Management was absolutely anti-doping. I hated letting them down when I couldn’t win.

— Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) July 31, 2012

Again JV, this time with feeling.  And finally, we’re about to get something like an answer:

@cokesdonegal My conscience wouldn’t let me take the money. My conscience also wouldn’t let me go back… So, stopping was the only option.

— Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) July 31, 2012

He won’t say it but I can.  His conscience wouldn’t let him go back to doping.  He had some major success due to the dope and became a high-paid blue chip rider for a team where he didn’t have to dope any more and made more money.  So for somebody who is not a puritan, but still maintains some qualms about his doping, he’s really found a “win-win” situation.  The only thing missing was an actual win. Basically he couldn’t perform because going off the dope left him somehow physiologically damaged at least for a while.  There’s no honor in wasting his team’s time and money failing to deliver wins, and no honor in lying to his team (risking their reputation) to deliver the wins he’s being paid for.  He did end up riding for a domestic team for half a year before totally throwing in the towel.

@petervdveen Uh…yeah. — Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) July 31, 2012

Well, Peter is being quite clueless.  But honestly, this is another brilliant non-admission.  It sounds like he’s saying “Yeah, I took dope to win,” but he leaves that nice lawyer’s loophole just to torture us – he can always claim he meant “Yeah, it does sound like that.”

@susanswarbrick @cokesdonegal I don’t know? Just sort of crept up on me… — Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) July 31, 2012

@kenbobpryde They did. I just answered with some BS.

— Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) July 31, 2012

So wait… not following this part.  Do you mean to say that when dopers are asked about their doping they might actually <gasp> LIE?

@lsvlkirk No. Not at all.

— Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) July 31, 2012

I think if we eliminated dopers from management and coaching, even I might become qualified for his job. This is also a good time to point out that he’s explicitly said there are no deals in place protecting him (then again we just found out he is a “known liar”). Apologies for the odd formatting that follows:

@pllb Old news. We covered a story maybe 2 years ago in which @vaughters mentioned being no stranger to the “hot sauce” (paraphrasing) — John Galloway (@sofaboy) July 31, 2012

@sofaboy @pllb And green chile. It’s really quite good. — Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) July 31, 2012

@sofaboy @pllb And the only way any semi-sane person chooses that path, is if they have some pretty deep scars to drive them.

— Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) July 31, 2012

To me, his desire to keep his riders out of a similar situation also speaks to his hiring practices.  Basically he won’t hire someone with a known or suspected doping history unless that person is open and honest about their past and realistic about their expectations of future performance.

@ericthedead With all revealing photos as well…

— Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) July 31, 2012

Is he making a dick joke, or …

Cyclevaughters: floyd has a photo of the thing

Dang, where did that come from? Twitter didn’t even exist back then… anyway. There’s a little more yada yada about his angst and his motiviation…

@theanaloglife I think the only way you could choose to take on that fight the way i did is if you’ve got some pretty nasty angst from past. — Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) July 31, 2012

@1973mlb No regrets. Made a way bigger difference doing what I’m doing. — Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) July 31, 2012

@cokesdonegal And that’s why you need someone like me to help these guys out – make sure they don’t end up stuck..

— Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) July 31, 2012

Well, I guess Twitter is a lot cheaper than therapy. Moving on…

Now back to fart jokes.

— Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) July 31, 2012

And that’s the end of the show. Or is it? Well, there was one short followup after that:

@sc_cycling Quite a bit, I’d imagine.We were a successful team, in a limited way, but we all were proud of how we did it. That had to spread — Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) August 1, 2012

So clean, they shine! So now he’s definitely done, right? Right? Maybe, a few hours later just one more person might have some questions? (And again, apologies for the tweet formatting).

@danmaize No.The team was clear:No doping. But we were barely getting into the big races and needed results. I knew how to get that done.. — Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) August 1, 2012

@danmaize So, choice was: Go back to something I’d walked away from and lie, or disappoint Roger, who I really liked. Disappoint either way

— Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) August 1, 2012

@danmaize When I speak out against the points system, theres a reason: I know the internal consequences of a points system gone wrong.

— Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) August 1, 2012

@danmaize So, as opposed to torturing myself with should I do it again/should I not? Every single waking moment, I just walked. Sanity>$$$ — Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) August 1, 2012

This is perhaps an even clearer answer to his original question.

@danmaize think all the guys were a bit vexed; reality is O2 vector drugs r more important for climbing than other aspects it hit me hardest — Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) August 1, 2012

So  JV, does this mean transfusions or EPO or transfusions?

@danmaize That’s a complex answer. Never had a transfusion. Takes an infrastructure and medical staff for that. Can’t just “sneak” it..

— Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) August 1, 2012

Well.  EPO then.

@danmaize But to be clear, in no way is a transfusion a gateway drug! It’s risky and takes a whole crew of medical staff. Bad news.

— Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) August 1, 2012

@danmaize Yeah… I see what you’re saying, but from a health standpoint, transfusions in a non-hospital setting are scary.

— Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) August 1, 2012

Or in other words, health concerns trump ethical concerns.

@danmaize Thanks for listening to me in an unbiased way. I appreciate that more than you think.

— Jonathan Vaughters (@Vaughters) August 1, 2012

So that’s it.  All in all, there really was no jaw-dropping bit of unexpected information for the more cynical among us. This is very much what we might have expected.  Nevertheless, I’ll be the first to admit that my jaw was more than just ajar.  We’re so accustomed to the never-ending platitudes, the dodging of the question, the non-denial denials, that when we see someone go off the script, it feels like finding an ocean in the middle of the desert.

Jonathan Vaughters Lance Armstrong in 1999 at the pre-Tour medical check
Photo: © AFP Photo courtesy CyclingNews.com

Just yesterday, we found out that the UCI has been having a bit of a spat with USADA.  UCI had requested USADA’s case files on Lance et al, which USADA (rather bluntly) refused.  That’s a whole ‘nother thing that’s not directly related to all of this. But along the way USADA had this to say:

“If UCI is truly interested in setting up a special panel to deal with doping, it should not be for one case, rather UCI should ask (the World Anti-Doping Agency) to establish an independent body akin to a Truth And Reconciliation Commission, where the skeletons of doping in cycling can all come out of the closet, the many cyclists who have doped can come clean and cycling can go forward with a fresh start.”

Thanks to Mr. Jonathan Vaughters going off his meds (wine) for a day, we’ve got a glimpse of what that might look like.

Jonathan Vaughters (Credit Agricole) takes a turn on the front
Photo: Rob Karman courtesy of CyclingNews.com

Features editor Claudia C. Pucci managed to get a few quiet words with the famous Texan between meetings with his lawyers last week. In our fabulously “soft” interview style (although not quite as fawning as Phil and Paul), we decided to cut through the controversies, get down on the comfy sofas with a nice hot cup of cocoa, and find out just who inspires the seven-time champ… 

Claudia:  So Lance, how are you today?

Lance:  I’m very well, Claudia. First off, I have to say thanks for having me over to chill out on your sofa here at the Cyclismas offices. It’s always a pleasure and you’ve always been so kind to me.

Claudia:  Well it’s a pleasure to have you Lance. So lately we’ve been thinking a lot about role models here at Cyclismas. Do you have any? Did you have any when you were younger?

Lance:  Well it’s a little embarrassing actually…

Claudia:  Oh go on, please do tell.

[Lance grins sheepishly and eats a chocolate-sodden marshmallow.]

Lance: OK then, so long as you promise not to laugh. Ever since I was a young kid I always tried to be a bit like Terminator; he was my first role model if I think about it. I used to watch his films all the time; even before I was allowed to (they were R-rated movies, after all!). I liked him because he was always on a mission and never gave up, he was really strong and nothing fazed him. I like to think I’ve taken on those qualities over the years and transferred them to my bicycle racing.

He had these crazy powers of recovery, every time he got injured or blown up he would come back in double-quick time, it was unnatural! Also, he was really focused; he just simply would not stop until he had destroyed his victims. Obviously I don’t pursue victims, Claudia, I pursue success and cycling excellence instead!

He remains a real hero of mine, a legend of his time. In fact, if it wasn’t for The Terminator I’m sure I wouldn’t have won all of those Tours de France. He gave me real belief in myself, he was an example to me. Knowing that he could achieve anything he set his mind to is what flicked the switch inside of me to turn me from just a talent into a champion.

It’s such a shame that he killed himself at the end of Terminator 2: Judgement Day so that his technology couldn’t be used to accelerate the war against the machines.

Claudia:  Errr… yeah.

Lance:  I mean, I have so much to thank the T-800 cyborg for, and now he’s gone. The way he protected Sarah Connor from those more advanced cyborgs in the finale of Judgement Day was exemplary.  Also it was heroic how he was able to continue fighting despite Kyle blowing him up with a pipe bomb in The Terminator. Even though he only had one arm left and no legs he still continued his mission of death and destruction. I felt exactly like that after crashing in the 2003 tour. Terminator helped me win the 2003 tour.

Claudia:  You do know the Terminator isn’t real don’t you? He’s played by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Lance:  You’re joking, you mean that weird Australian governor of California or whatever? He’s the one that’s twinned to Danny de Vito, right? I enjoyed Kindergarten Cop but he isn’t my role model. Terminator is someone else.

Claudia:  Yeah that’s him, the de Vito twin…

[Lance looked visibly shaken at this point, so we popped a couple more marshmallows in his cocoa and waited for him to settle down again…]

Claudia:  Sorry Lance, Terminator isn’t real. Everything was fake, you were just watching a performance the whole time. It was just acting. I thought you knew, I didn’t want to upset you…

Lance:  I refuse to believe this. My entire outlook on life, all my success, everything is based on The Terminator being a real person. How can I be inspired by a fake?

Claudia:  Does it matter that it’s just a story? You still managed to win those races yourself in real life, right? Fake or not he influenced you anyway.

Lance:  No you’re wrong, everyone is wrong. It’s a conspiracy I tell you! Terminator must be real and I’ll tell you why. If he wasn’t real he wouldn’t have been able to inspire me to become a super cyclist. If he wasn’t real no one would be truly inspired by him. If he wasn’t real then how do you explain my success? He must be real, of course he’s real, YOU IDIOT!

Claudia:  Ummm, with all due respect he really is just a character in a film, you can look it up on imdb.com if you want…

Lance:  Oh the Internet? Nothing on the Internet is true, imdb is just part of the conspiracy.

Claudia:  But if you go on YouTube, there are probably interviews with Schwarzenneger about him playing the role of Terminator…

Lance:  There was no “role” of Terminator, and YouTube videos prove nothing. Terminator was real and he defeated Skynet. You should be grateful, and all you can do is call him an imposter. You should be ashamed of yourself. YOU ARE ALIVE TODAY BECAUSE OF TERMINATOR AND YOU TREAT HIM LIKE HE’S A FAKE? YOU DISGUST ME.

[At this point we decided to end the interview. Lance did finish his hot chocolate, though, so I think we’re good for next time.]

Next week: Johan Bruyneel will talking to Cyclismas about his inspiring life-long role model: Johan Bruyneel.

Cyclismas: Your cycling roots go back to the 1980s. I guess you must have known then of guys like Wayne Stetina and John Vande Velde. Two, three decades on and you’re telling the story of the team that Peter Stetina and Christian Vande Velde ride with. Is that cool, or does it just make you feel old?

Mark Johnson: It’s cool, and when I’m around the younger guys like Dan Martin and Peter Stetina their enthusiasm makes me feel younger than my 47 years!

Cyclismas: Jonathan Vaughters opened his introduction to Argyle Armada with a quote from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. It’s a much abused and rather clichéd quote at this stage – ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times’ – but, for once, used aptly. Let’s take both sides of the picture, the worst first. Garmin started the 2011 season with the dismissal of Matt White, ended it with the folding of the women’s team. There were all sorts of other issues during the year, from the way the team dropped riders so they couldn’t take points to rival teams, through the tension with Thor Hushovd and the team’s role in the race radios brouhaha. Fair to say it was the year the team grew up, lost a lot of its innocence?

Mark Johnson: I also cringed when I saw that quote, but it’s what JV chose and in the end it fits the year and his intro.

I believe that what the team lost, and Vaughters told me this more than once, was the ability to position themselves and ride as just the ‘100% clean team.’ For the sake of their fans and their sponsors, they had to move beyond a marketing slogan (one they backed up with substance, nonetheless) and start delivering wins.

So yes, in the sense that they had to move beyond the peach-fuzzy gloss of youthful enthusiasm and promises and start delivering substantial wins, they did lose some innocence. Beyond that, they still maintain a degree of the fifteen-year-old’s goofiness that other teams don’t have.

Cyclismas: The good times. If you’re only going to win one Classic in a year, you might as well let it be the Queen of the Classics, Paris-Roubaix. You were in the little vélodrome in Roubaix when Johan Vansummeren broke away at the Carrefour de l’Arbe, fifteen kilometres out. You watched on the big screen as Leopard’s Fabian Cancellara began his chase, Thor Hushovd unable to hold his wheel. You knew what Vansummeren was capable of, you knew what Cancellara was capable of. For you, personally, as someone who has been a freelance writer and photographer with the team since 2007, what was watching those final few miles like?

Mark Johnson: Even though it seems like I saw more of this team in 2011 than my own wife and family I tried to maintain journalistic objectivity and distance with the team. The moment Vansummeren rode into that vélodrome was one of the moments those efforts collapsed.

Johan Vansummeren enters the vélodrome in Roubaix as he solos to victory in the Queen of the Classics. (Photo courtesy of Mark Johnson)

That moment reminded me of two other sporting moments that will forever resonate with me: the day the US Olympic team beat the USSR in ice hockey in 1980 and the afternoon Greg LeMond won the Tour in that dramatic TT win over Laurent Fignon in 1989. All three were simply electrifying, and that’s saying something for a person who is not really that big on sitting around on a Saturday afternoon watching sports on TV.

The Roubaix win was emotional especially because Vansummeren is as humble as he is tall. He is such a deserving winner, and the fact that the Belgian water carrier from Lommel did it at a race that, while technically in France, feels as much a Belgian classic as Flanders the Sunday previous, made it all that more poignant to see him win.

The fact that Thor Hushovd sacrificed his own Roubaix victory desires to make it happen made it even more touching, and that really came through as I observed Thor’s face display a chiaroscuro mix of melancholy and joy in the team bus after the race.

Also, the day was such a joyous contrast to the clinical, all-for-Lance disciplinary methodology Armstrong employed to win races. That Roubaix day put an alternative spin on the way American teams have traditionally won at the highest level of cycling.

Cyclismas: The team had two pretty successful Grand Tours, in France and Spain, but the mood between the two – certainly as you paint it in Argyle Armada – was markedly different. The Tour was like one long, extended party, the Vuelta like a rite of passage. Did that surprise you, or are you used to that in the Vuelta?

Mark Johnson: It didn’t surprise me, but it was certainly a striking contrast and I’m glad it came through in the narrative. Those boys were really suffering at the Vuelta.

While the flush of victory carried them through the pain – and disguised it to a degree – at the Tour, the sheer, gruelling brutality of a three week stage race was so much closer to the surface at the Vuelta. At the breakfast table, dutifully spooning oatmeal past their teeth, they truly had the faces of slaves of the road.

Cyclismas: Park the big moments a moment, Paris-Roubaix, leader’s jerseys in all three Grand Tours, stage wins and the like. Let’s look at the little moments instead, those moments of magic that really enhance our love of cycling. Biggest little moment of the year for you?

Mark Johnson: One of the biggest was also one of the quietest: watching Christophe Le Mével push that boy over a hill in the Belgian Ardennes during their LBL recon ride was profoundly touching to me. I mean, Christophe didn’t need to do that, but he took the time and there is no telling how that moment might affect the trajectory of that kid’s life. As Paul Kimmage told me, they just seemed like decent people.

Also, seeing how much not winning Colorado and the Canadian races affected Ryder Hesjedal and Christian Vande Velde endeared me a bit more to the sport. The root of their disappointment was of course personal – anyone at that level of racing must be fuelled by a selfish desire to win. But I was really struck by their expressions of how their disappointment stems from their failure to deliver a legacy to the young kids watching them. In other words, the source of their disappointment at not winning was also extrinsic – focused on others – as much as it was rooted in ego. I guess I didn’t expect to find what were basically selfless impulses fuelling their sense of failure.

Another moment that comes to mind was sitting down with Thor in Pinerolo, Italy, after stage seventeen of the Tour. Hushovd is generally a pretty reserved guy; he’s nice, but he just doesn’t say much and keeps to himself. On this day, he really opened up about his frustration with the riders’ lack of consequence and leverage in the organization of their sport. They may be the stars on the road and in the eyes of the public; but when it comes to affecting the design of their profession, they aren’t even water carriers, and that dichotomy seemed to really bother Thor.

It was all the more moving because at that moment, Hushovd was poised at the acme of his profession – three more Tour stage wins, seven more yellow jerseys, the rainbow stripes – yet, when the subject turned to the business of cycling, his mood was one of dejection and frustration, not celebration.

It’s funny because, earlier that day, someone introduced me to Thor (not realizing that I had been haunting him since January) and Hushovd responded, ‘Oh, I know Mark, he’s like family.’ I guess I had developed familiarity with some of the riders to a degree I didn’t realize. I certainly did not try to fraternize with them throughout the year; I just watched and observed and gave them their space when I sensed it was time for me to do so. I can only hope my book treated them fairly and honestly.

Thor Hushovd at the Garmin-Cervélo team presentation, Girona, January 2011. (Photo courtesy Mark Johnson)

Cyclismas: Peloton politics pepper the story you tell in Argyle Armada, the big issues such as race radios, the UCI’s role in our sport, financial concerns, the lack of a riders’ union etc. Having spoken to Garmin’s riders, and others within the peloton, how would you describe the cohesiveness of the riders themselves when it comes to having a voice on these key issues?

Mark Johnson: The riders generally express the same concerns you summarize in your question, and they also all cited the same general reasons why they are not organized (language, judicial jurisdictions, socio-economic variations).

But until someone like a Marvin Miller arrives with the focus, energy, experience, and talent to organize them and skilfully negotiate with the existing power holders, I don’t see anything changing. A rider can’t do it. It’s too much to be both a professional labour organizer and a professional athlete at the same time.

Cyclismas: Everybody admits that cycling is tied to tradition. But it’s never been a sport stuck with just one way of doing things, it’s constantly evolving. Ten years ago the Tours of Oman and Qatar were hardly even dreamt of. Twenty years ago French was still the lingua franca of the peloton. Thirty years ago women were only slowly becoming a part of team personnel. Forty years ago the UCI had virtually no power. Fifty years ago anti-doping rules were in their infancy. Cycling never stands still. The changing attitude to doping aside, what’s the most important change you’ve witnessed since first coming to the sport?

Mark Johnson: The emergence of English as the lingua franca of the peloton. Notwithstanding the fact that the photographers’ briefing meetings at the ASO events are still in French (and why not, it’s a French organizer, and most of the photogs speak French anyhow), the fact that English is now the language of the business and sport of cycling portends a larger shift in power that I suspect may happen once higher-functioning business people realize how much money is being left on the table by pro cycling’s current status as, in Christian Vande Velde’s words, the world’s biggest amateur sport.

Also, the booming popularity of the sport among participants in the US and in Europe. It’s stunning to see how many everyday people have become enthralled with riding the bike, and I think that on-the-ground passion will help the professional side of the sport, once it gains more professional management.

Am I concerned pro cycling will turn into a soulless, two wheeled F1? Not really; universally, among all the insiders I spoke to throughout the year about the future of the sport, maintaining a balance between the sport’s primitive appeal while also giving it more management maturity was constantly mentioned as essential to the sport’s longevity. I hope that came through in the book!

Finally, while it’s fashionable to bash the UCI (and they often deserve the beatings), it seems to me they have done more than many other pro sport governing bodies to try and crack down on doping. Yes, their application of rulings and enforcement consistency is lacking, if not corrupt, at times; their infantilization of the riders is undignified; and basic human dignity seems secondary to the UCI’s impulse to hang suspects out to dry in the court of public opinion. But compared to the big American sports, where doping infractions bring a slap on the wrist, the UCI has forced pro cycling to confront its doping problems. Does the clean end justify what can seem to be some scandalous UCI means? I don’t know. Regardless, along with what seems to be a changing acceptance of doping among many of the younger riders, I think the diminished acceptance of doping is an important change – if it lasts.

Cyclismas: Cycling, a lot of people tell us, is too complicated. It needs to be simplified so that fans can understand it. Because, apparently, we don’t actually understand it at the moment. You followed Garmin for most of a season, from the Classics through Cali, on to the Tour, through the Quiznos Challenge and the Vuelta, and then on to the two Canadian races. Each race was different, each race was contested by different groups of riders, sometimes races were on in one place while another was ongoing somewhere else. Given that you’ve had to sit down and explain those races to fans, to unify a season, what would you change?

Mark Johnson: I’d more clearly delineate the top level races. The UCI is kind of stumbling in that direction with the ProTour, but then you’ve got something called the WorldTour – and what the heck is the difference? And the fact that a brand new race with no fans on the roadside, a blanket of filth in the air, and a bunch of listless, bemused riders like Beijing can get WorldTour status while still in the newborn ward discredits the prestige of the entire series.

Give the new fan something they can get a grip on if they want to know what to tune into for the most important races in the most spectacular settings with the best riders racing. And then, at the end of the year, let those key races crown a season champion.

I tend to agree with Serge Arsenault [organiser of the two WorldTour races in Canada] in the book; the template is already there.

Mark Johnson with the tools of the trade (photo courtesy Joel Westwood/Velopress)

Cyclismas: Photography. Like riding a bike, it’s something anyone can do, so a lot of people think it’s not all that hard. Point, press, hey presto, a classic image. The reality is a little bit different: there’s a wee bit more to it than just pointing your iPhone at the peloton as they whiz past and cleaning up in the image in PhotoShop or filtering it through Instagram. Care to share some insight as to the type of kit you cart round with you, the pros and cons of digital over film, and what life’s really like behind the lens?

Mark Johnson: I have a blog post on exactly what kind of camera stuff I lugged around with me while shooting this book, rather than rehash that here, I will leave you to look at that.

The conversion to digital from film is a blessing and a curse. For new photographers, it’s a blessing because you can ramp up your skills without the cost of film and developing. Getting instant feedback on the back of your camera on what works and what doesn’t makes this a fabulous time to start taking photos.

For professionals, the curse is that you shoot a lot more images than with film, which means you have to spend more time editing those photos down to a few selects. The product delivery time-frames are a lot shorter now, too. There is no more post-event down time while you or a lab develop film.

Of course, the pressure to be in the right place at the right time is always there, too. With experience, you gain confidence in your equipment and your control over it and light, so you don’t worry so much about getting the key finishing shot. Even when your equipment fails (and it does, especially with the beatings it takes shooting cycling photography), you also learn to stay calm and get the shot with crippled machinery. With this book, there was way more pressure in deciding what to leave out than stress over what I had missed.

Cyclismas: Jonathan Vaughters is one of the leading voices in the battle to make the race organisers let the teams have a (greater) share of their profits, specifically linking this argument to the sharing of TV revenues. Let’s take that point to its logical conclusion: photographers, like you, should share a slice of your income with the teams, riders, and races you photograph. Ditto a percentage of your income from writing about them. How much would you be willing to fork over to feed the machine, to keep the wheels going round, to save everyone from having to stick with a system that – we’re told – is broken?

Mark Johnson: When a steel and auto economist and labour organizer named Marvin Miller organized professional baseball players in the mid-1960s, one of the first things he did was renegotiate the raw deal the players had negotiated with a major manufacturer of baseball cards. The players were essentially giving their images away for life and getting very little in return.

While pro cyclists may not be able to negotiate with the ASO yet over TV revenue sharing, it seems to me they would do well to federate themselves and gain control over the use of their images to market products and sell dreams. For example, a cohesive riders league could then go to a manufacturer who wants a rider to endorse their product and say, OK, you can do that, but these are the economic terms, and part of your advertising and production spend is going to go back to the riders’ league and be shared by all the riders. (This sort of careful image management is standard in most sports and entertainment businesses, but not in cycling.)

While it would make life more complicated for photographers like me, I think in the end such a change might benefit everyone by increasing rates all the way around. When negotiating licensing terms with a manufacturer, all the parties would know that part of the photographer’s licensing fee would have to go to the league, and rates would adjust accordingly. Today, anyone can grab a good photo of a rider and flip it over to a manufacturer for peanuts or for free, and that harms working photographers who shoulder significant capital and overhead expenses.

As far as how much I’d be willing to fork over; it would make sense to look at the models other sports use and start there. That’s one of the nice things about cycling being in such a primitive state as a business – as it matures it can learn from the mistakes and successes of other pro sports like F1, soccer, baseball, tennis and golf and hopefully follow the good and avoid the bad.

Argyle Armada, a double-page layout example. (courtesy VeloPress/Mark Johnson)

Cyclismas: Let’s go back to the book. Argyle Armada is a mix of words and images. It’s not quite the conventional coffee table cycling photo album some might take it to be: the words and the pictures work together synergistically. I tried to compare it with other cycling books in the review, but did you have a particular model in mind?

Mark Johnson: What I had in mind was a series of New Yorker–like day-in-the-life chapters that were illustrated by photographs. Because there is so much political, social, and economic import to what Jonathan Vaughters is trying to do with this team, I had no interest in doing a photo-only book with captions.

I adore the crafts of both writing and photography – they both involve the thoughtful and selective application of light and shadow, with degrees of gradiated penumbra between the two. My model was a book that would use both mediums (writing and photography) to illustrate a year with the team with a degree of richness that would be difficult to do with either just narrative or photos alone.

In the end, I am pleased with how well the photos match the narrative. My editor at VeloPress, Ted Constantino, was a big help in deciding which photos go where. As a photographer you become emotionally attached to certain photos for aesthetic or personal reasons. Having an editor like Ted who could say, ‘yes, it’s a pretty photo, and it’s technically spot on, but it doesn’t propel your story, so we should leave it out,’ was exceptionally helpful for me.

Cyclismas: Let’s get back to the team, and to the riders. Two hats for you, and I want you to give me two riders: wearing your professional’s hat, who’s best in front of the camera, or gives the best copy; and, wearing your fan’s hat, who are you rooting for the most?

Mark Johnson: One of the luxuries I had in spending a year with the team is that I did not have to rely on the post-race sound bites. Immediately after an event, the riders are exhausted and can go into media management mode – just say enough to celebrate your team and plug the sponsors for the bristling array of microphones in your face, then get back to a shower and a plate of warm food. It’s completely understandable.

However, since I had a year to file my story, I could go back to the riders and interview them a week or a month after an event and collect their more measured thoughts after they had time to process and ponder the race-day drama. And that means, with almost all the riders, they simply told me more than I could have ever expected. For example, Johan Vansummeren a week after Roubaix telling me about his crushing stress riding in with a flat tire.

Christian Vande Velde at the races would have his game face on and not say much to me at all. But when I followed up with him a few weeks after the Tour of Colorado, while he was riding around on a tractor in his back yard, he was genial and loquacious and seemed willing to chat all day about his career, the race in Colorado, and the state of the pro cycling profession.

I think the most eloquent observers on the state of pro cycling were Jonathan Vaughters and Tyler Farrar. The best man for sound bites is Dan Martin – that one has spunk, and seems to have been trained in the Chris Horner school of speak your mind honestly. A base man will forever avoid you. Of course, a half hour with David Millar will set your tape recorder on fire. He’s a forceful, eloquent, thought-provoking man.

As for who I was rooting for with the fan hat on, Sep Vanmarcke, Ramunas Navardauskas and Murilo Fischer come to mind. All three are just delightful, warm-hearted human beings, and young Sep and Ramunas represent pro cycling’s bright future. I had many heart-warming conversations with Murilo in Spanish, since my Portuguese is so miserable. I also think back fondly to a day that he and Dan Martin took me on a bike ride down some of the most scenic, out of the way roads that I would have never, ever found on my own in Girona. The kindness and warmth of these riders also stands in such contrast to their fearsome capacity on the bike.

Dave Zabriskie remains a cipher to this day. Even after speaking to him at length on multiple occasions and watching him for a year, he remains an enigma to me. A charming question mark with a sly and lively sense of humour, but a tough one to crack nonetheless!

Cyclismas: The big thing this year is going to be the team time trial at the World’s, the riders being asked to forget their national colours and don their trade team jerseys again for a day. That’s a race Garmin-Barracuda are targeting. I’ve grown up listening to cycling journalists slagging off TTTs at every opportunity, but this one is shaping up to be a helluva lot of fun.

Mark Johnson: Yes – that is going to be a great race. And the TTT is the only kind of TT that doesn’t look like paint drying when watching it on TV.

Cyclismas: Are there plans for an Argyle Armada II: On Stranger Tides?

Mark Johnson: Not yet on this team – I’ll give them a couple more years before I’d consider circling around again for another book. But, oh man, along with doing a lot of book promotion talks and slide shows, I have magazine articles and race coverage assignments stacked in my queue like planes on the LAX runway. But I’m grateful for the work and happy to have cheques landing in the mailbox!

I had a publisher approach me about doing an Argyle Armada type book on a pro triathlete, and that might be interesting, if there are politics and culture involved. A photographer named Liz Kreutz did a photo book on a year with Lance Armstrong. Something similar on a compelling triathlete but with a substantial written narrative might interest me. And since GreenEdge is linked to something larger, a nation of restless immigrants, that’s a team that might stand up to a book-length treatment like Argyle Armada.

I like to write about people. My dream assignment would be to write a piece on Jonathan Vaughters for The New Yorker. So if any of your readers have contacts at that citadel of high culture and fine writing, please feel free to get in touch with me!

* * * * *

Mark Johnson is the author of Argyle Armada – Behind the Scenes of Pro Cycling Life, published by VeloPress (2012, 207 pages). (Read the review here.)

You can find him online at ArgyleArmadaBook.com and on Twitter, @ArgyleArmada.

Our thanks to Mark Johnson for taking part in this interview.

Team Hitech Products-UCK (photo by anMartin/Martin Vestby)

What we wanted to find out were two things:

1. What sort of difficulties does women’s cycling have, how can they be solved?

2. How to build and set up a pro team for success?

Karl Lima, Team Manager

Pedalingtheroad: 2011 has been a fantastic year for womens cycling in general and for Team Hitec products-UCK. What can you tell us about your season impressions ? 

Karl Lima:

We have had a splendid year, we got a head start by signing Emma Johanson, the reigning Swedish champion, but I really feel that the other girls have come forward one by one as the season went on, to everyone’s joy.

Some might wonder how a Norwegian guy ended up running one of the most successful teams out there; can tell us about yourself and how you got into cycling in the first place? 

Sure, I’m from a working-class family on my father’s side and a more academic family on my mother’s side. As most, I grew up with football (soccer) and different team sports; I first started to ride a bike when I became a mediocre footballer. You could say I became a mediocre cyclist instead! I have kept sports close ever since, really, working as sporting director in Bryne Cycling Club since 2006 and I have also trained different age groups in football (soccer). For the time being I am technical director and part owner at Hitec Products AS in Stavanger, Norway. We are the world’s leader in electro-hydraulic control systems for the energy industry. [Hitec Products develops and delivers control systems, electro-hydraulic systems and chemical injection systems to the energy industry. -ed.]

How was Team Hitec Products born?

Ullensaker Cycling Club wanted to start the very first Scandinavian pro team for women back in 2008. They wanted Tone Hatteland from Bryne Cycling Club as their sprinter and contacted us because of this. When the financial turbulence hit globally in 2008, the two main sponsors pulled out of the project. Suddenly I found myself organising other things too. I arranged so that my company, Hitec Products, could sponsor the team as main sponsor. Hitec Products was already known locally for being into sports, supporting local football (soccer) and ice hockey, in addition to giving all employees a bike to encourage to better health and environment at work.

I used Hatteland’s network from Holland and Sweden to sign talented and experienced riders to the team. Riders like Isabelle Søderberg and Sara Mustonen from Sweden, along with Danish cyclist Margriet Kloppenburg. Our vision was focused on the Olympics in London 2012.

Creating a team from scratch is always exciting and something of a crossroads. I’m sure you did your share of thinking. What ideas did you have, what positions did you hire first? 

The first positions I got in place were management. Then other staff/support positions. We ”inherited” some of the old club riders [Norwegians, -ed.] the first year so I focused on signing a few experienced foreigners as well as completed the roster with young, talented Norwegian riders. This combination was a success. The rest is history, as they say.

If you could single out a couple of the most important criteria for success, what would they be? 

Clear and consise goals, the ability to make quick decisions, team before individuals, and a solid base of riders. And the move to attract experienced riders from outside Norway to help coach the younger ones. After all, there was a reason womens cycling in Norway was having problems back then.

Speaking of goal setting, what are the team’s main goals for 2012?

We are going to participate in the Olympics with at least six girls from the team and of course we are going to win the gold medal. We will defend our three championship jerseys (Emma Johanson, Frøydis Wærsted and Ferrier Bruneau). We will also try to win the World Cup. In addition to this, we expect to match this year’s UCI victories (13) and participate in the new TTT at the Worlds.  

Lets move on to women cycling in general. Several teams have had to close down this year, among them HTC and Colavita-Forno d’Asolo (the sponsors of the last team have split and sponsor one new team each). How do you think the future of women’s cycling looks – golden or grey? 

I see several positive developments in women’s cycling, like more races and a general increase in the number of UCI teams registered. What is truly great about this is the fact that “new” nations arrive. I believe it is important not to get stuck and whine, repeatedly pointing out that we get too little attention here, too low salaries here, and no broadcasting there. It is counterproductive. We have to stay positive and keep working undeterred towards better recognition and create more attention to our sport by continue to focus on the development of quality in every step and the general offer we possess to sponsors and fans. Like what the Norwegian national handball team or the women’s Nordic ski team has done. Women’s cycling is qualitative speaking quite similar to the men’s that I truly believe this is possible. The fact that we ride 2 km/h slower is hardly visible, unlike the differences in for instance football (soccer). Girls also look better on the bike than men. If we are patient, the money and the attention will come naturally.

The debate about how to improve the public interest (and economical aspects) in women’s cycling has been ongoing this autumn. What do you think can be done to improve this aspect?

I believe we have to become so attractive that people wish to spend money on women’s cycling. We can achieve this by doing what I mentioned earlier, by selling ourselves in a positive way without whining too much. That said, TV ad broadcasting is very important. By the way, I was worked up over the road Worlds this year. The peloton was almost not recognizable. Sad to see such a strong team like the Dutch didn’t want to race, betting on a mass sprint. Maybe it was good they didn’t succeed with such negative tactic. Had Hitec Products come home to Norway racing like that in a national race, we’d be bullied, that’s for sure.

Some female cyclists, like Bridie O’Donnell, have said that the UCI are neglecting women’s cycling by not supporting races, salaries issues, to mention a few. They feel frustrated over the situation today. Do you feel the same way?

I am not frustrated. But I note that the UCI are a bit old fashioned in how they view women’s cycling. They can definitely do more for the sport. But I think that they believe that if they introduce minimum salary on the present time, many UCI-teams will close.

You have four new signings in anticipation of next year’s season. What are your expectations for Hitec Products-uck in 2012?

We will have more cards to play in the toughest races, the girls we have signed are world class. Watch out for Elisa Longo Borghini, she is just 20 years old!

Next year we’ll see nine races on the women’s world cup calendar. Any races in particular we should be on guard for an Hitec move? 

All of them! But if I have to pick I would say Plouay and Vårgårda, these races we want to improve from 2011…

Thanks again for your time and your thoughts on these matters. 

*****

You can follow Pedalingtheroad on twitter, @Pedalingtheroad, or on his blog – pedalingtheroad.blogspot.com

Updated 9:07 pm, 29 September 2011 by cycletard. Please see postscript.

I had been contemplating a helmet article for a few months, when, bam, I stumbled onto Chris Smith from Lazer Sport on Twitter.

I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that my entire initial conversation with him was not based on curiosity about helmets as much as it was about whether or not he’d be a good interviewee. Every one of those initial questions were just probes, feeling out his knowledge base and his frankness.

I mean, was he just going to spit out the company line? Or would he say something interesting?

While many of his answers look like the “standard company line,” and some of them certainly are, many are also truthful in a practical sense. He was a lot more open than what I’d expected, but I still had some frustration in the nature of a few responses.

For instance, is it a cop-out when a company builds helmets within the current – and admittedly inadequate – legal testing standards, and falls back on the argument of ‘lack of empirical data’ as a reason for continuing to make helmets without faired or recessed vents; or with more and larger vents even though it means that smaller sections of harder foam crush against a rider’s skull in the event of a crash; with a visor; or to justify the “aero tail” for purely recreational riders when it gives no clear benefit but may in fact increase the chance for a rotational brain injury?

Yes and no.

If there are concerns regarding unfaired vents, unrecesssed vents, aero-tails, the potential of being sliced in the face by a visor, thinner and harder vent ribs actually being less safe despite performing identically during testing of the legal standard, then who is it incumbent upon to study those concerns? Shouldn’t that be helmet manufacturers? Do they get to turn their heads and ignore possibly serious and even dangerous failings in their products merely because the current legal standard fails to make them responsible for that specific aspect?

It’s clear from the interview that the legal standard is widely acknowledged within the industry to be inadequate and unrealistic. Once that is acknowledged, doesn’t it become the responsibility of manufacturers to ensure that their helmets are safe according to real-world standards and not merely an ineffectual and unrealistic legal standard?

Are helmet manufacturers negligent if they fail to at least examine the possibilities that certain features may be inherently unsafe?

But if helmet manufacturers are negligent, then don’t consumers hold some responsibility as well?

Chris said:

 

… if safety is the only goal in helmet manufacturing, then you’re not going to survive as a company.”

 

And he established several times during our interview that customers are not purchasing helmets based on which one has the best safety features, nor based on which has the fewest unsafe features, and that consumers – when they bother to contact Lazer either directly or through their dealers – aren’t concerned with safety-based features, but instead with cosmetics and things like “will I be able to put my sunglasses in the vents of this helmet?”

It would seem that, at a minimum, consumers are complicit in any negligence on behalf of the helmet industry.

On one hand, manufacturers have a responsibility to make the safest helmet possible, and when they know that the legal testing standard is inadequate and unrealistic, then they have the additional responsibility of developing helmets that protect in real-world situations.

But, if the consumer proves through their buying habits and through an utter lack of expressed interest in those safer helmets, and the manufacturers might in fact run themselves into the ground by producing maximally-safe helmets that will then be purchased by virtually no one, then it seems right and reasonable that, as an act of self-preservation, such helmets are not offered.

If consumers say they want more vents, and they don’t care if the resulting helmet puts smaller sections of harder foam crushing against their skull should they crash, then what?

Is it the manufacturers’ responsibility to save us from ourselves and refuse to make that type of helmets? If one manufacturer refuses, then won’t there be others willing to oblige?

But Lazer’s (and I assume most if not all manufacturers’) practice of looking, as Chris said, “at what consumers are already buying in that segment” seems to blatantly ignore any possible direct input from consumers. There are no studies, no polls, no questionnaires, no focus groups, no email queries via a database of existing customers.

It’s just, “hey, which helmets are our competitors selling the most of and what features do those helmets already have?” That’s not only a very indirect method of gathering data, but it fails to take into account that consumers only have a specific selection of helmets and features available without even wondering if maybe we’d like something different if we were given an opportunity to provide direct feedback. It’s like the industry doesn’t really give a damn about whether or not we want safer helmets, it’s going to offer us what IT thinks we want and if that isn’t good enough, well just too damned bad.

When Chris says, “I would politely take issue with people saying that’s what they’re looking for, because that’s not what they’re looking for, because that’s not what people are buying,” isn’t at least a portion of that due to the fact that we can’t buy those helmets with specific safety features because they aren’t even offered?

You can say that consumers “vote” with their wallets, but they can only “vote” in that manner for products that are already on the market and readily available for purchase.

The claim of not knowing or being able to tell if certain features, like faired vents, recessed vents, rounded vent opening edges, or lack of an aero-tail are truly safer or not because of a lack of empirical data and lack of testing standards, on the one hand is true and practical, but on the other is disingenuous. They’d have that empirical data if they gathered it.

And I apologize if this seems like I’m picking on Chris and Lazer. They just happen to be the sacrificial offering, laid upon the altar on behalf of the industry entire. And as of this writing, POC has not replied with requested feedback.

Let’s take, for instance, the Lazer Rigidity Brace System (RBS). Is there a legal testing standard to determine if this is actually safer? Have there been official studies? Or did someone just say, “Hey, if we manage to keep the foam together in multiple low-speed impacts that might be a good thing and save some riders from suffering brain or skull injuries!?”

I mean, sure it SEEMS like a great idea, and quite logical, but shucks, without that legal testing standard and that empirical data, it’s just pointless to even try to know for certain. Right?

Of course not. So I don’t buy the argument that commonsense can’t be used in evaluating the benefits or dangers of certain features. Like, I don’t buy that you just can’t know without a legal testing standard and an official study supplying official empirical data that narrower vent ribs made of harder foam will cause more damage when smashing into your skull than will wider vent ribs made of softer foam.

X amount of energy reaching your skull over a smaller area, delivered through a harder, less giving surface is a bad thing. I don’t need an army of engineers and scientists to spend millions of dollars and hundreds of hours in a lab to figure that out for me.

As I mentioned above, the people who bother contacting Chris and his industry counterparts at all seem only to be concerned with cosmetics, weight, airflow and convenience features, instead of with any facet of helmet safety. I find that very disappointing.

Because I know from reading what cyclists and fans of cycling say on Twitter and elsewhere to me, that many people are very concerned with helmet safety issues. So, why aren’t any of those people complaining to the people who actually make decisions about what features go into the helmets we buy and use? Why aren’t they calling and writing Chris at Lazer and his counterparts at other helmet manufacturers? If you’re going to expend the breath or energy to complain, then, damn it, complain so as to actually make a difference.

Even more disappointing is this; when Chris addressed the issue of customer contact he said, “…if I did get those questions, it would have to go back to, well, you know, our helmets are designed to meet and exceed the current testing standard.”

In other words, even if you do get off your ass and direct your needs, desires and complaints to the guy or the place where it matters – or should matter – you’ll get brushed off. Why? Because companies like Lazer don’t really give a damn about what you want? They only care about focusing on selling you what they want to sell you? When it comes right down to it, that’s really how it seems to be.

How is it possible to combat that? Well, Lazer and other companies might blow YOU off if you call. But, what if it wasn’t just you? What if it was you and three of your friends all in a week, plus a guy from your club and three of his friends, plus a guy you pass on the trail a couple times per month and three of his friends, plus…? As the numbers mount it becomes more difficult and less practical to ignore them.

Or what if you initiated a petition directed to the heads of several major helmet manufacturers at someplace like Change.org? What if a few thousand people all signed up for something like that and all those names and requests or demands went out to all those helmet manufacturers? What if you did that again every six months until they finally granted you the notice and respect you deserve and began producing better helmets? Helmets with commonsense safety features, like faired and recessed vents, like fewer and smaller vents and thicker vent ribs, like no aero-tail and no visor, like rounded shells. Wouldn’t that be better than having them fall back on, “Well, these other helmets meet the legal testing standard that all of us in the industry readily acknowledge to be inadequate and unrealistic.” Why not upset the paradigm that the consumer will buy whatever these companies make and keep their mouths shut and like it?

Chris says, and I don’t doubt his sincerity, “We are a helmet manufacturing company and the rider’s safety, at the end of the day, is our number one priority.” But, is that true? I mean, in a practical, real world sense, is it true? Because that notion seems to contradict a lot of what we covered in our interview.

I do not mean to say – not in any way or to any extent – that helmet manufacturers intentionally make unsafe helmets. But, I do mean that they are ready and willing to settle for “safe enough” while using the known-to-be-inadequate legal testing standard as a shield and a convenience.

Companies like Lazer and POC are at least attempting to change on some level with the introduction of MIPS to (so far) a very small portion of their overall product lines. But unlike MIPS, those other features that we’ve mentioned – faired vents, etc. – don’t require any special period of compatibility development and they don’t cost an extra $20 per helmet to introduce. They can be done now and at very minimal cost.

Chris and the guys at Lazer, POC and other helmet companies are not evil people. They don’t want you to have unsafe helmets just so they can line their pockets with fat stacks of your cash. But, if they’re going to become motivated to alter the helmet lines to reflect YOUR desire for specific safety features, then YOU will have to express your thoughts directly to them, and you’ll have to encourage your friends to do the same. They’re going to need to know that “if they build it, you will come” (to thoroughly mangle a Field of Dreams quote). They’ll need to know that in giving you helmets with these features, that they won’t be sacrificing their very company to insincere whim and caprice. They need to know that we’re not only asking for helmets with certain features and without others, but that if those helmets are offered to us, we will buy them.

So contact the manufacturer of your favorite helmets and express your opinions. Then get your friends to do the same. And have them get their friends involved. And so on.

Here is some contact information for a few helmet manufacturers for you to begin with:

Lazer:  Chris@lazersport.com

POC:  info@pocsports.com

Giro: @GiroSportDesign (on Twitter)

Bell:  Bell Contact Form Page

___________________________________________________

Chris Smith has written a very thoughtful reply to this opinion piece which I urge everyone to read. You can find it on his tumblr blog here. This has been an interesting dialogue, and we are grateful to Bikezilla for his questions, and to Chris Smith of Lazer Sport for his answers. Our aim with this piece is to educate, inform, and provoke thought and investigation. Please make educated choices about your selection of cycling helmet, and always wear a lid when you ride. ~ cycletard

For Part 1 of this interview, click here.

Bikezilla:

I read some of your material and learned that head injuries caused by crashes are more often due to rotational forces, because veins and nerves in the brain get torn by the twisting and rotation.

Then I watched your MIPS (Multi-directional Impact Protection System) video.

Some of Lazer’s helmets for 2012 (P’Nut and Nut’Z) will come with the MIPS option.

It looks to me like MIPS helmets have a liner and in case of impact this liner rotates a little.

Chris Smith:

Yeah, basically, we use a retention system called Rollsys® in our high-end helmets.

And, basically, compared to other manufacturers where all the adjustment is done at the back of the helmet and pulls the front of the helmet against the rider’s head. The Rollsys® system is a cable-actuated system that goes all the way around the rider’s head and allows the entire circumference of the retention system to adjust around the rider’s head. It serves as kind of a self-centering mechanism to ensure that the helmet is centered on the rider’s head. It also helps to distribute the load of retention all the way around the rider’s head so they don’t have any kind of hot spots or discomfort. It’s very easy to adjust, there’s a roller on the top of the helmet that controls the cable.

Well, through our collaboration with MIPS, they’ve modified the Rollsys® system so that it’s doing the same thing, where it’s kind of isolating the rider’s head from the shell. The hybrid MIPS/Rollsys® system is attached to one pivot point on the shell.

In the even of an impact that’s severe enough to activate the MIPS system, that one pivot point will break loose, and allow the shell to rotate around the MIPS.”

Bz:

Under normal conditions and prior to any impact, there’s zero rotation in the system, strictly due to MIPS? You can’t just grab your helmet and jiggle it?

CS:

No, no. You’re not going to be able to pull the helmet/shell off the rider’s head, or pull the shell from the retention system.

There’s an attachment point and in the event of an impact of significance – and that’s engineered, you know it’s got to be a certain amount of energy going into the helmet – this attachment point will break loose and allow the shell to rotate or move, while the MIPS retention system isolates the head from that movement.

The shell of the helmet is rotating instead of the head.

That’s also a great way to identify when a helmet has actually received an impact that is sufficient enough to replace the helmet. Once that MIPS attachment point is broken loose from the shell there’s no way to reattach it. The helmet at that point needs to be replaced.”

Bz:

How much weight does the MIPS liner/system add to a helmet? How does it affect fit and comfort?

CS:

It doesn’t affect fit and comfort at all, because it’s basically duplicating our current Rollsys® system. Again, we’re talking about children’s helmets, what we’re offering for 2012.

Because of the size of the helmet and the design of the retention system, it doesn’t add any weight and it doesn’t affect the comfort of the helmet at all.”

Bz:

Does it affect airflow?

CS:

Nope. It’s basically replacing one retention system with another and the MIPS retention system as opposed to being attached the way our traditional Rollsys® system is attached, the MIPS system is attached differently with this one pivot point at the top of the helmet.

But otherwise the size of the belt that goes around the rider’s head, the size of the, we call it the basket, that goes around the back of the rider’s head, it’s basically the same as our current system. It’s just been kind of redesigned and modified by MIPS in order to achieve their goal and pass their test.”

Bz:

MIPS allows the inner portion of the helmet to move within the outer portion. But what about simply designing helmets with safer exteriors? Smoother, more rounded surfaces? Faired and rounded vents and ribs? Fewer vents? No aero-tail? No visor?

CS:

Well, I would say two things. First off, it kind of goes back to what I was saying about designing the safest helmet in the world, but nobody is going to buy it.

If you go to an Ironman triathlete who is looking for a helmet that offers A, B and C features, and you don’t offer them that helmet, but you say, well I offer you this helmet, it’s a lot safer in case you crash. They say, ‘This helmet from your competitor meets the testing standard, but I also get all this other stuff, why should I buy your helmet?’ ‘Well, our helmet is safer.’ ‘But, I’m not gonna crash.’

At that point you’re trying to sell someone something that they’re not really interested in. That can be applied to whatever segment you’re talking about.

But the other, more specific [point] to this topic is, if you are looking at rotational brain injury and reducing rotational brain injury, then you’re going to design a system to address that specific need. And if you can address that need while still incorporating the features that consumers want, like air vents, or an aerodynamic tail, or whatever else the helmet might have, if you can maintain those features and still address the phenomenon of rotational brain injury, then it’s a win for everybody.

You’ve improved the rider’s ability to get through a catastrophic impact with less chance for rotational brain injury, you’ve improved their ability to survive an impact like that, while you’re still delivering the performance that they are looking for in that helmet.

Now, the downside to that is, it’s more expensive.

Like I said, we’re offering the P’Nut helmet and the Nut’Z helmet in a MIPS version and a non-MIPS version, and at retail the MIPS version is going to be $20 more.

So, the consumer has to make a decision, ‘What’s more important to me – a helmet that has the performance features that I want and is $20 less, or a helmet that has all the performance features that I want and this added safety benefit that’s $20 more?’”

Bz:

Is that going to be standard upgrade price when you take MIPS to other helmets and lines?

CS:

That hasn’t been decided yet.

The issue with MIPS is that the helmet has to be designed specifically to accept it. The P’Nut helmet and the Nut’Z helmets, we introduced those in 2011 and we worked with MIPS on that helmet in order to come up with a helmet that was specifically designed to accept the MIPS system. Now, we’re introducing that for 2012, because the system is finally dialed, they’re comfortable with their testing and we’re comfortable with integrating into the shell.

So, going forward if we’re going to come out with new helmets that have MIPS, the helmet has to be designed, or redesigned to accept it. We had to make a decision to introduce MIPS at a particular segment of the market. We decided to address the children’s market first, because the two guys that own Lazer over in Belgium, myself, the brand manager here in the United States who has a lot of feedback on product design, we all have families, we all have kids. It’s a huge, huge priority for us.

We all ride, and wear helmets.

So, we kind of needed to update our children’s helmet line. We decided, okay, we’re going to come out with some new children’s helmets, so let’s design the shells to accept this MIPS system and let’s introduce that into our children’s selection first before we bring it out into our other helmets.

But, it’s definitely a feature that we’re going to include in more helmets going forward, because we really believe in it.”

Bz:

I want to keep talking about this, but I need to jump back to the previous question.

The reason that we don’t see what a lot of people might think are common-sense features like faired and rounded vents is, it’s not what consumers are demanding, it’s not what they’re looking for, it’s not going to sell?

CS:

Yeah. And I would politely take issue with people saying that that’s what they’re looking for, because that’s not what they’re looking for, because that’s not what people are buying.

The market is addressing what the consumers are looking for.”

Bz:

When people contact you they’re not saying, ‘Hey, I wish you’d make a helmet with faired/rounded vents, no aero tail, etc.’

CS:

Nope. People are telling me they want lighter helmets, they want better air flow, they want a particular style or cosmetic. That is what people are concerned about.

Or, you know the other big issue that we face with our helmets is – you’re probably not going to believe this – our helmets have a reputation for not being sunglasses-friendly. You can’t stick your glasses in the vents. That’s the number one feedback I get on our helmets. People are critical of our helmet design because the vents are not positioned for people to easily stick their sunglasses in their helmets.

Every time I get that comment, while acknowledging that’s what the market is asking for in the high-end helmets, it still blows me away that that is what we’re getting requests for and that is what people are concerned with.”

Bz:

What about after a serious professional crash like Wouter Weylandt’s, or Chris Horner’s crash? Do you suddenly get an influx of people saying, ‘What about these safety features?’

CS:

During that first week of the Tour, well, not following Weylandt’s crash, really, but during the first week of the Tour and the number of crashes that happened in Brittany, I noticed the buzz on the internet, people asking questions about helmet safety.”

Bz:

But, they didn’t contact Lazer with those concerns?

CS:

Nope. I received exactly zero questions from consumers.

I can’t say it’s not happening. Maybe people are asking their dealers about it, or asking other people about it. But I fielded no direct questions from consumers or from dealers looking for follow up, or regarding how and when helmets might be improved in order to address their concerns regarding helmet safety.

And, honestly, if I did get those questions, it would have to go back to, well, you know our helmets are designed to meet and exceed the current testing standard. If somebody or an organization decided that they wanted to improve the testing standard and that testing standard was adopted by the government in whatever market that we’re talking about, we would encourage that.

I mean, we are a helmet manufacturing company, and the rider’s safety, at the end of the day, is our number one priority. So, anything that can be done in order to improve the safety performance of the helmet is absolutely something that we want to pursue and take seriously. But, we can’t do it at the expense of the viability of the company.

We still have to meet the needs that consumers are looking for.

Because honestly, the consumers look at the helmet certification, I mean, nobody is selling uncertified helmets anyway, but the consumer goes into a bike shop or they’re shopping on line, and they’re assuming correctly that all the helmets they’re looking at are passing the testing standards. So, the very fact that they’re wearing a helmet at all, they feel, ‘Okay, as far as helmet safety, I’ve done everything I need to do to make sure I’m wearing a safe helmet by just buying a helmet at all. Well now I’m gonna look at weight, I’m gonna look at the air vents, I’m gonna look at how cool this helmet looks on my head. And those are the criteria that I’m going to use to evaluate which helmet to buy.’

You know, what else can the consumer do? There’s no other testing standard out there. There’s no data that anybody could look at. There’s speculation, ‘Well, you know I think a helmet should be this, or it should have this, or it should have that.’

Consumers, there’s really not much that they can do with that information.”

Bz:

Do you think that the more stringent and more realistic MIPS testing standards might eventually be adopted voluntarily industry-wide?

CS:

I hope so! I hope that, because honestly, [between the] motorcycle industry and bicycle industry, [in] bicycle crash injuries, this rotational brain injury accounts for a real significant portion of brain injury. So, it would be my hope that helmet testing standards, that the current standard is either replaced, or that the ability to test the head’s resistance to rotational injury with a particular helmet is taken into account in helmet testing.”

Bz:

Back to MIPS.

How do you think that will be phased into your overall product line and over what time period? What’s the next place you’ll introduce MIPS?

CS:

That’s a good question, and that’s going to probably have to be a follow-up question. Because I don’t have the answer to that.

I don’t know what segment we’re going to introduce MIPS into next, whether it’s going to be mountain, full face, road, price-point adult, urban commuter, I don’t know. It could be one or a combination of those different markets, or it could be all of them. I don’t know.

The owners of the company are going to be here in the United States next month for Interbike, and that’s certainly something I can talk to them about and find out what the future plans are for that MIPS system in the rest of our line.”

Bz:

Because each helmet has to be designed individually for or with the MIPS system, it’s not something you can do at the snap of a finger. It takes time to redesign each helmet and each helmet line?

CS:

Yep. We’re not going to… no, I can’t say that. I can’t say that we’re not going to have MIPS in everyone of our helmets at some point, because we very well may. As a matter of fact, if MIPS or some equivalent becomes part of the testing standard then not only Lazer, but every manufacturer, has some way to address this rotational injury phenomenon.

But, we’re always working on the next-generation helmet that’s going to replace whatever our current model helmet is in whatever helmet segment we’re talking about.

So, I can only assume that as we’re going forward and new helmets are being designed, that MIPS can, and may very well be, incorporated.”

 

[NOTE: Here’s the official answer via email – Bz]:

“While we continue to study the implementation of the MIPS system in our helmet line we are not yet prepared to discuss a timeline for integration into the entire line nor are we able to discuss which helmet might incorporate the MIPS system next.”

Bz:

I have to believe that you’re not the only guy, not just at Lazer but in the industry, who’s not happy with the testing standard. So is the responsible government agency being lobbied to change or upgrade the standard?

CS:

Not that I’m aware of. I mean, you’re dealing with three entities – Australia/New Zealand (ASI), United States/Canada (CPSE), and every country in Europe (CE). Honestly, I don’t know who is setting the CE testing standard. Well, the CE testing standard is not just bicycle helmets, it’s nearly every helmet sold in Europe. If you look at the back of your motorcycle helmet you’ll see that CE certification. It just means it’s approved for sale in that country.

The bicycle industry, I don’t know if helmet manufacturers have the resources to lobby all the different government entities that may be involved in improving the testing process.”

Bz:

Is there an industry organization?

CS:

There’s not a helmet manufacturer’s organization. Not that I’m aware of. There’s certainly advocacy groups, in the United States and I can only assume in every country around the world where cycling is a major activity, that advocates on the part of cycling and the cycling industry.

That would be certainly a good project for those advocacy groups to take on, to improve helmet safety, or at least be reviewing current testing standards to be sure that they are matching with real-world circumstances.

I can say on behalf of Lazer, we would have absolutely no objection at all to reviewing or improving testing standards in order to improve helmet safety. We’d have no objection. In fact, we strongly encourage it.”

Bz:

If the industry isn’t going to push for change, how do you think it’s going to come around? Or who’s going to enact that change?

CS:

That’s a good question. Whether it’s driven at the consumer level, the dealer level, the manufacturer’s level. I don’t know. I think that what, for better or worse, what the likely scenario is, that manufacturer’s like Lazer identify a particular problem, like rotational brain injury, and either take it upon themselves or work with an organization like MIPS, in order to introduce features that address that. Then other manufacturers take that issue seriously and look for features that address that as well. Then at some point all these manufacturers will be addressing a particular problem from so many different directions that somebody finally decides, ‘Well, everybody is trying to solve this problem different ways. Let’s come up with a standard testing procedure and ensure that all helmet manufacturers are meeting that testing standard.’

But, yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Bz:

When that change finally comes it’ll come from inside the industry, not from the government?

CS:

Absolutely!

I believe, if I know my history, that the automobile industry early on could be an indicator. Because I don’t believe that features like, and maybe I’m wrong, but features like seatbelts and safety glass and airbags and center-mount brake lights, I don’t believe that these innovations were mandated by any testing agency. I believe it was a concept that was tested, proven to provide a safety benefit, and introduced by manufacturers to gain a competitive advantage that said, ‘Look, our car has this feature and it makes it more safe than another car at that price point and we think you should buy it because of that.’

Then all of a sudden other manufacturers are like, ‘Okay, now we have to have a center-mount brake light because these guys do.’ And then they’re all offering that safety benefit. Then the government may step in and say, ‘Well, everyone is doing this anyway, but they’re all doing it lots of different ways. Now, the center brake light has to be in this position, has to be this width, has to have this kind of illumination power.’ And they codify what everybody is already doing, into a testing standard.

I don’t know if seatbelts, safety glass and airbrakes are the same situation. I could be wrong. It could be a situation where one country mandated airbags and the manufacturers said, ‘Look if we’re building this model car in this country and it’s got an airbag, we may as well just put them in all cars.’

But I think that often you see innovation from manufacturers who are looking to distinguish their products and give them an advantage in the marketplace. Rather than trying to meet the testing standard within their own country.”

Bz:

Is MIPS owned by Lazer? Or will we see this system offered by other manufacturers?

CS:

Nope. No, Lazer is a Belgian company based in Antwerp. I believe MIPS is a Swedish non-profit research institute, that partners with manufacturers, but is a stand-alone company.”

[Editor’s note: MIPS is indeed a Swedish company, and the MIPS system acronym stands for Multi-directional Impact Protection System. It is not clear from their website statement whether they are non-profit or not.]

Bz:

So we’ll see MIPS offered by other manufacturers?

CS:

We’re already seeing it. I mean, Lazer is not the first company to incorporate it into bicycle helmets.

POC uses a version of MIPS in, I believe, one of their full-face helmets and perhaps one of their bucket helmets.

So, MIPS actually came to market in bicycle helmets from POC.

Lazer, is the first company that is offering a MIPS helmet in an in-mold manufacturing process. We’re also the first company that is offering MIPS in a children’s helmet.”

Bz:

Initially it’s going to cost $20 for a MIPS-upgraded helmet vs. a non-MIPS helmet of the same model. What’s the actual cost of installing MIPS?

CS:

I don’t know what our installation cost would be. I mean, it’s a more expensive manufacturing process to incorporate MIPS. So that’s reflected in the cost. We’re not making an additional profit on the MIPS helmet. That increased price just represents the materials and the manufacturing cost to include that.”

Bz:

Do you support MIPS in their research and development?

CS:

Yeah. Now I don’t know what that looks like as far as a financial component, at all. But we worked very close with them to develop the shell, and they worked with us to develop the interior portion of the helmet. Because we wanted to make sure that the MIPS retention system was going to go into our shell, be compatible, and actually work. So, yeah, we worked very closely with them. It was a totally collaboration.”

Bz:

It wasn’t just a matter of fitting the MIPS, it was a complete helmet redesign. It wasn’t, ‘How can we make MIPS fit in this helmet we already have.’

CS:

Yeah! They designed a MIPS system specifically for Lazer and specifically for this helmet.”

Bz:

When you say “system” you aren’t just talking about the rotation part and its singular attachment point. The entire helmet is the system?

CS:

That’s correct. And that’s why this is not something that you can add to a helmet after the fact. It’s not even something that you can redesign an existing helmet to be able to take. The shell has to be designed and the foam had to be molded correctly in order for the MIPS system to mount and function correctly when there’s an impact.

And if you look at it, MIPS designed this ‘insert’ specifically for our helmets. They looked at our existing Rollsys® system that we used on our mid- and high-end adult helmets, and they duplicated the look of that Rollsys® system for the P’Nut and the Nut’Z helmets. Because they felt that the front belt and the rear basket that’s used in our retention system did such a great job, as far as the attachment points on the head, that they kind of duplicated that look when they designed the insert that goes into the shell.

So, the MIPS system, looks like our Rollsys® system, because that was the foundation they used.

But, you can always tell a MIPS helmet, because the retention is this bright yellow. And that’s how you identify the part of the helmet that’s actually going to move vs. the shell. Because everything yellow is what’s moving in the case of an impact.”

Bz:

Since MIPS liked and chose to keep and use your Rollsys® system, will we see a version of your retention system in other manufacturers’ MIPS helmets?

CS:

No. I can only assume that other manufacturers are going to want to collaborate with MIPS in order to either take their retention system and figure out a way to modify it to do the same job in their helmets, or to come up with a completely new system.

The benefit that our Rollsys® system offers, is it encircles the entire head between the front and rear component of the Rollsys® system. To my knowledge, I don’t know of another helmet manufacturing company that is making a retention system that encircles the entire head. The competitors that I’m aware of, the entire adjustable section of the retention system sits at the back of the head, and as you adjust it tighter it pulls the front of the helmet tighter against the rider’s forehead.

We developed this, again, to go all the way around the circumference of the rider’s head and to offer the adjustabilty and the comfort, and that’s why it was so easy for MIPS to use that same style mechanism. Because it does go all the way around the rider’s head, and that’s what you have to have with this MIPS system. If you’re going to isolate the rider’s head from the shell, it has to hold on to the entire circumference of the rider’s head.”

Bz:

I’ve read a test report that compared the performance of sub-$20 helmets and $150+ helmets. They found virtually no difference in performance, and the cheaper helmets slightly outperformed at low impacts.

For an additional $20, the MIPS helmets are supposed to reduce brain damage, or potential brain damage, by about 33%. Is that a real number?

CS:

Yeah! And that’s directly from MIPS.

If you want to follow up on that I can put you in contact with those guys. They’d be more than happy to talk to you about their system and that number.

Obviously it’s their number, it’s their testing standard. But, it’s a real number and they’ve duplicated it in the lab time and time again.”

Bz:

A $20 investment can reduce your risk of brain damage by about 1/3?

CS:

Yes.”

Bz:

But the MIPS system isn’t going to be available in lower-end helmets.

CS:

Not yet.”

Bz:

I can’t expect to buy a $45 helmet, as opposed to a $25 helmet, and expect to have a MIPS system in it?

CS:

Not from Lazer. Not from anybody, I believe.

Technology like this can’t be deployed all at once.”

Bz:

What about over the next five to ten years?

CS:

Oh, absolutely! I think it’ll be a much shorter time frame than that.”

Bz:

Less than five years?

CS:

Yeah. I don’t know if it will be ubiquitous in the helmet market. But, I am pretty confident to say that within the next five years you will be able to find a MIPS helmet at a number of different price points, for adults. Absolutely.”

[After my interview with Chris, I had the opportunity to talk briefly with Daniel Lanner, a technical engineer from MIPS. – Bz]

Bz:

Would you explain the MIPS testing standard/procedure? Chris referred to is as more “real world.”

Daniel Lanner:

I take it Chris refers to the fact that today’s helmet tests, no matter helmet category, are only focusing on straight radial impacts (90 degree) whereas in a majority of all hits of the the head to the ground, you fall with an angled impact.

The difference between the two impacts is the type of violence or energy they transmit into the brain. A straight radial hit provides straight radial or translational energy, a type of energy we know is less damaging to the brain. The angled impact, however, gives rise to rotational energy and violence to the brain. So today’s helmets are not tested to withstand the most common and most damaging blows to head – angled. Rotational violence is the cause of the most severe type of brain injuries. These injuries are called Subdural Haematoma and Diffuse Axonal Injury. (Please view our website for more extensive information)”

Bz:

Would you explain the reliability of the claim of reducing potential brain damage by about 33% using a MIPS vs. non-MIPS helmet and how that number was arrived at?

DL:

It is difficult to set a specific number in percentage that the MIPS system reduces brain damage. The reduction using the MIPS system differs depending on impact site and direction to the helmet. However studies have shown that rotational measurements (rotational acceleration and rotational velocity) correlate well to the risk of brain injuries and that a reduction of these measurements reduces the risk of brain damage. With the MIPS system, we reduce the magnitude of these rotational measurements in the order of 25-55 %.”

Bz:

Chris was aware of three manufacturers using, or soon to be using, MIPS: Lazer, POC and one other. Who is the third manufacturer? Is that number rising? Will MIPS helmets be more broadly or even generally available over the next few years? Do you have a time frame?

DL:

Except for POC and Lazer, the US brand Burton brings their snow helmet brand RED to market this season. In addition, two different equestrian helmet brands – Back on Track and Felix Bühler – distribute helmets in Europe.  At this weeks’ international bicycle trade show, Eurobike, there will be two additional brands launching helmets with MIPS. I am afraid I can’t reveal their brand name yet.

We are currently working on implementing MIPS in several bike, snow, motorcycle, military and ice hockey helmets. All to be launched during late 2011 and 2012.”

Bz:

Is MIPS working to change the legal standards (CPSE, ASI, CE) officially? Or will the higher, more realistic MIPS standard remain entirely voluntary? If so, do you think that it will eventually spread throughout the industry in all (US/Canada, Australia/New Zealand, Europe) markets?

DL:

We are members of and participating in meetings with the mentioned certifying bodies and yes, we are working towards having the general test standards upgraded with a demand that helmets provide protections against angled impacts and rotational violence. We believe that the consumer demand for optimal protection will create a pressure on helmet manufacturers to include such technologies well ahead of any change of regulations. The official changes tend to take very long.

MIPS are, as mentioned  above, delivering our technology to a fast growing number of leading brands in most helmet categories and we expect that to continue spreading across helmet segments and geographies.”

Bz:

Are you aware of any alternate “real-world” standards either in use or in development by other companies?

DL:

If you refer to the helmet industry, no. For other industries, a good comparison could be made with the airbag for the car industry. It started out as something very exclusive and to some consumers an obscure safety feature. But as the market got aware of the massive safety impact it has, the airbag has more or less become a “real-world” standard without authorities changing laws and regulations. Would you buy a car without an airbag? We see the same happening in the helmet industry  where consumers will shift from old technology to new technology and include MIPS or future similar solutions.”

Not that long ago on Twitter I came across @Helmeteer_Chris, who is the PR guy for Lazer Sport, and I had some questions for him. That discussion grew into a full interview, which follows in two parts.

Primary sources of information for this interview:

BHSI

Questions about standards?

Helmet foam materials

Bikezilla:

I’m just curious, when one of your competitors comes out with a new helmet, do you guys go out and buy a dozen, just to see what the other guys might do better?

Chris Smith:

I can tell you for a fact that we do purchase and test competitor’s helmets. We’re not crashing them! But, we do, and I’m sure other manufacturers do, test helmets to assure that they’re meeting testing standards. But we’re also testing the actual weight vs. advertised weight, we’re testing airflow, we’re testing comfort.

So, yeah, when I go over to Belgium once or twice a year to meet with the guys in the office and when we go for rides, we’re not all wearing Lazer helmets.

I mean, that’s the only way you know what competitors are doing, as opposed to just getting anecdotal evidence. You gotta spend a significant amount of time riding those helmets in order to really understand what’s going on. And I’m sure similar people at similar levels at our competitors are doing the exact same thing.”

Bz:

Have you ever tried out one of those helmets and come away liking it better than yours? I won’t ask for a brand name.

CS:

Ahhhhh, I’ve tested other helmets where I’ve appreciated a specific feature, ‘Oh, God, this helmet is so light, or the venting on this particular helmet I really feel an amazing amount of air going over my head.’

But, I can tell you that at the end of the day there’s always been some kind of knock that would keep me from using a competitor’s helmet versus Lazer.”

Bz:

Not just because you’re paid to say it, you actually do prefer Lazer helmets.

CS:

I’ve been working for Lazer for three years and I’ve been riding with Lazer helmets for seven years. I started using Lazer helmets as soon as they started being sold in the United States.”

Bz:

Is it true that helmets are intentionally made to just meet or to barely exceed CPSC (Consumer Product Safety Commission) or other standards? Meaning they intentionally do not exceed the standard by much?

Do Lazer Helmets exceed legal testing guidelines? If so, how?

CS:

I can speak on behalf of Lazer specifically.

There is a minimum testing standard, specifically for CPSC for the United States, but also the CE for the testing standard for Europe and the ASI testing standard for Australia. We exceed that standard by a factor of two.

Helmets we design and manufacture – and I believe this is very common in the bicycle industry – are meeting and exceeding the testing standards by a factor of two. I believe that’s very common if not the norm in the bicycle helmet industry.”

Bz:

Are the CE and ASI standards similar to the U.S. Standard?

CS:

The CE standard is less stringent than the CPSC standard. The ASI standard is more stringent than the CPSC standard.”

Bz:

So you exceed the most stringent [standard] by a factor of two?

CS:

Well, we are unique in the bicycle industry, I believe, in that we actually manufacture helmets specifically for the testing standard used in each market.

We exceed each specific market by a factor of two.

What I’m trying to say is, if you look at a particular model helmet, we may make that model helmet different ways depending upon the market that helmet is going to be sold in.

And what that will yield is a helmet that is more competitive in its category in that market.

Like in the CE market, the European market, the Genesis helmet is slightly lighter weight than it is in the CPSC market and the ASI market. And that’s just because in order to meet our internal testing standards and the CE testing standards we can get away with using less material in the European version of that helmet and make it more competitive at its price point and its segment in the market.”

Bz:

It’s not a matter of making it maximally safe, it’s a matter of making it competitive.

CS:

Yeah. Fundamentally, what you need to understand about helmets is, there’s lots of different helmets for lots of different types of cycling and different price points that consumers are willing to pay for a helmet. In order for a manufacturer to be successful in business, they need to deliver a product that the consumer wants to buy.

So, for a helmet that has a particular weight target it has to cost within a certain range or price. Or, a helmet within a certain price range, it has to have a certain maximum weight for it to be considered a legitimate contender in the marketplace.

So, the European helmets are a little bit more competitive on weight vs. price, because the testing standard is not as stringent.”

Bz:

What about industry standards? Has the helmet industry come up with its own set of testing standards? Or does each manufacturer come up with his own, which may or may not exceed the legal?

CS:

No. There’s no collaboration in the bicycle industry between manufacturers on helmet testing standards.

It’s a third entity, in the case of the United States it’s the CPSC that sets the testing standard that the manufacturers follow. But there’s no cooperation or work within the industry to develop a new standard, or to develop a standard other than what is currently accepted, which is the CPSC standard in the United States.”

Bz:

Is there much fluctuation, manufacturer to manufacturer, on exceeding the legal standard? Or does everyone exceed it by 2X?

CS:

I can’t speak for other manufacturers. I don’t know.

I know that a smart company will look to exceed that standard, for two reasons. Number one, to assure that the helmet is providing the maximum amount of safety that it can within that category of helmets. Whether you’re talking about a $300 helmet or whether you’re talking about a $30 helmet, you want it to be the safest helmet you can manufacture at that price point, using whatever technology you’re using and whatever benchmark maximum weight you’re trying to hit, or whatever. You want to deliver the safest helmet you can at that price point, to be competitive in the market.

But you’ve also go to take into account manufacturing process, and that will fluctuate.

If you’re using a mold to build the helmet foam, that mold is gonna start to wear over time. There might be factors in manufacturing that will affect how that single helmet will test out.

So, if you are designing a helmet and testing it out, pre-production samples, testing those out that they exceed the testing standard by, like I said, a factor of two. Because if you’re beating it by a factor of two and you lose one or two points because the mold is starting to wear out, or whatever reason, you can be sure you’re still far exceeding the testing standard.

Whereas, just hypothetically, if the drop test says, we don’t want to see forces any higher than X, and you’re hitting at X + .01, you basically don’t have any margin for error during the manufacturing process [when not aiming to intentionally exceed the minimum standard – Bz].

So, in the case of Lazer, and I believe that this is common in the helmet manufacturing industry, exceeding that standard by a certain factor, and I think two is pretty common, assures the manufacturer that they’re delivering a safe helmet and they’re accounting for any kind of issues during manufacturing that may knock a point or two off of the result during that test.”

Bz:

When should a helmet be replaced?

CS:

You talk about helmet manufacturers getting together and coming up with a testing standard. What I wish is that manufacturers would come up with a consistent message regarding helmet replacement. Either an amount of time, you know, you’ve had this helmet for two years you should really think about replacing it, and coming out with some hard data that says, okay, you leave this foam exposed to UV light for such and such a time the foam degrades and offers less protection, the plastic degrades and is more likely to crack or shatter or whatever.

I mean, every time you have it outside you’re exposing it to UV light regardless of whether it’s in direct sunlight or the clouds or whatever. And ozone can cause plastic and foam to deteriorate. It happens.

Obviously, there’s sales and marketing. The more people replace their helmets the more helmets we’re going to sell. But, I see people riding all the time with unbelievably old helmets. From the 1980s, you know, the huge Bell V – 1 Pro. Those, you know, look bomb proof, but realistically have been around for so long that the foam is basically just an extension of the plastic on the outside of the helmet. In case of an impact the energy will go right into your skull.

Without testing, I don’t want to say that you’d be better off with no helmet at all, but…

Bz:

What happens to foam when it gets old?

CS:

It’s more brittle.

Bz:

It’s ability to give in an impact is gone?

CS:

Basically what’s happening is the cells in the foam close up. The amount of air inside the foam is being reduced. As the air in the foam is reduced, the foam is hardening up and the foam is then less able to absorb energy because it’s the air pockets within the foam that are actually absorbing that energy and compressing.

Bz:

At about what period of time does that occur? Or is it so much that you really should replace your helmet? Two years? Five years? Ten years?

CS:

I tell people that at a minimum they should be looking at a new helmet every three years. And that’s not just for deterioration of the foam. Because the foam would probably last longer than that. But, the more you use a helmet, the more it gets banged up. If you travel with the helmet, the helmet going to get knocked around. If you have in a suitcase or luggage, unless you take a lot of extraordinary care in order to protect the foam in the helmet, every time you move it around the foam gets dinged, the foam is compressing and compressed foam does not offer protection for the rider’s head. So, especially if you’re using it regularly, I think a new helmet every three years is not unrealistic.

Again, I’m not a scientist or an engineer, so I haven’t seen any empirical evidence.

Bz:

What’s the difference between a $25 helmet from Walmart or Target or some other big discount store and a $150 helmet? Because, just to look at them they all seem about the same; Styrofoam core, plastic shell.

CS:

Weight, ventilation, airflow, dual-density foam, additional reinforcement, better retention systems for more secure fit/comfort.

Glue-on shell vs. an in-mold manufactured helmet. A glue-on shell is basically, you mold the foam, then you have the shell that you glue on to the outer surface and you reinforce that with a piece of tape that goes around the shell.

That’s the original manufacturing process, when companies started to get into helmet design.

Then they switch to what’s called an “in-mold” manufacturing process, where you actually have the outer plastic shell, which you put into the mold and then you inject foam and it’s kind of all built as one piece.

Then, beyond that, you can have multiple-piece manufacturing process where you have the shell, you have one part of the foam that is injected at one point, you have another part of the foam that’s injected at another point, you can have multiple pieces of foam that are connected into the helmet during the manufacturing process. That allows us to piece objects inside the foam in order to increase the durability of the helmet in the event of an impact.

It also allows you to use multi-density foam. So if you want to lighten up the overall weight of the helmet, you can research areas of the helmet that are less critical for the protection of the rider’s head and you can use a lighter weight foam in that area in order to reduce the overall weight of the helmet.

But, basically, as you go up in price, you’re using a more sophisticated manufacturing process and trying to achieve the same ultimate testing result, using less materials.

You’re also trying to improve the performance of the helmet at the same time. You’re increasing the size of the vents, you’re putting air channels into the interior of the helmet to draw more air through the helmet, making it more comfortable. All of that stuff goes back to that sophisticated manufacturing process and very easily drives up the overall manufacturing cost of the individual helmet.

Also, the sophistication of the retention system. That has to do with how securely the helmet fits on the rider’s head. It also has to do with how comfortably the helmet fits on the rider’s head.

In a very simple retention system, maybe a recreational rider who isn’t going to be spending a long time on a bike, maybe doesn’t need a helmet that is going to be comfortable after seven or eight or nine hours on the bike. So they can get away with something a little less sophisticated. Whereas somebody who is a granfondo rider or a racer, doing a lot of training, they’re wearing their helmet for an extended amount of time. So they want something that is very comfortable for a long period of time, is very easy to adjust and maybe had multiple pieces that are involved in order to build that retention system.

The development of that retention system, building the helmet around that retention system and the multiple parts that go into it can also drive up the manufacturing cost. The straps themselves, you can use lighter weight strap materials in order to increase the comfort of the helmet, you can use a more sophisticated buckle system in order to lighten up the weight of the helmet. Or, in the case of our magnetic system, just to make it easier for the two pieces to connect. There’s a manufacturing expense to doing that as well.”

Bz:

You mention the two different types of manufacturing, the two-part helmet with a glued on shell, and the one part helmet with the foam poured into the shell. At the high or low end of either, is one type inherently safer than the other?

CS:

No. No. With current testing standards is one safer than the other? No. Because, they are both able to meet the testing standard and protect the rider’s head in the event of an impact.

I, personally, would have no hesitancy going out and riding with a $25 or $30 helmet. It just would not be as light weight, it wouldn’t offer the amount of airflow through the helmet, it may not be as comfortable, and it certainly wouldn’t look the way that I would want a helmet to look.

But as far as ultimate safety, it’s gonna do the same job as a $300 helmet is gonna do.

It’s just that the more expensive helmet is going to offer some additional features for the rider that somebody who’s going out and riding for 20 to 30 minutes is not going to… they don’t need, they’re not going to appreciate it, they’re not going to want to spend the money on it.

Bz:

In a multi-density foam helmet, what area or areas will normally contain the lighter-weight foam? How is that determined?

CS:

We make a determination regarding the areas of the helmet that are less critical for the protection of the head or the integrity of the helmet in the event of an impact, and those are the areas of the helmet that we can replace with the lighter weight foam. The helmet is then tested internally to assure that it passes testing within our margins. If it does not then we change the ratio between standard and lighter-weight foam and retest.”

Bz:

Pat McQuaid recently complained that the frames for $4,000 bikes are made in China at a cost of less than $40.

Manufacturers say he’s off the mark by as much as a factor of 10, but none of them are showing the invoices to prove that.

What is the actual cost of manufacturing a $25 helmet? A $150 helmet?

CS:

Hmmm, I don’t know.

I can tell you that looking at pure manufacturing costs you’re missing a portion, and a significant portion, of the expense of bringing a product to market. Research, development, engineering, prototyping, pre-production prototyping, testing. There’s a lot more that goes into manufacturing a product, regardless of what a product is, than just the raw materials and time spent in manufacturing it.

Bz:

Are those costs proportionally multiplied when you’re manufacturing a higher-end helmet?

CS:

Yeah! You have the in-mold process, where you’re molding the helmet out of different pieces of foam and you’re introducing different material as you’re manufacturing it.

Other than the machines and the shell and the foam in the helmet, there’s a lot of hand labor that does into manufacturing these helmets. It’s actually shocking.

We’re talking about threading the straps. You think about the complexity of these helmet straps, they’re all hand threaded. The more sophistication retention mechanism the more time has to be spent threading the helmet strap through that retention system. The more sophisticated the buckle, there’s got to be a procedure.

Our retention system, again, is pretty sophisticated and it has to be fed through the the exterior of the helmet, the interior of the helmet, during the molding process.

So, yeah, I think for other manufacturing factors… our more expensive helmets require, not a significant amount of raw materials, in a lot of cases it’s actually less raw materials. But the manufacturing process is more sophisticated and there’s a lot more hand laboring put into the manufacturing.

Bz:

What percentage of the overall manufacturing cost does R&D make up in a $25 helmet? A $300 helmet?

CS:

Impossible to say because these costs are highest at the first helmet sold and then are amortized over the life of the helmet model. The longer a helmet model stays in our product line or the more successful the helmet is in regard to sales the lower the cost of R&D makes up.”

Bz:

I’ve noticed that lower-end helmets often don’t even come in packages. They’re just hung on a peg.

CS:

Yeah! In Europe they’re not even hung on a shelf. They’re thrown into a big plastic bin. Just loose helmets thrown into a bin. Consumers just come in, they throw one on their head, ‘Yep, that fits. I’m ready to go.’”

Bz:

If you just pick up a helmet and look at it, it would seem to be made of about the same material as a cheap picnic cooler, except for the density of the foam.

How is helmet foam different from picnic cooler foam?

CS:

“That is a good question and one that I don’t have the answer to. Not being a helmet engineer and not being familiar with the different types of expanded styrene foams that are used it would be pure speculation on my part.

I believe the size of the individual cells, the air cells in the foam, the air cells on an EPS cooler may be very large and larger air cells do not offer the same kind of resistance to impact or the durability in a helmet that you’re going to be wearing on a daily basis.

When you talk about a helmet that uses dual-density foam, as I mentioned earlier, you’re IDing parts of the helmet that are less critical for the protection of the rider’s head and you’re using a lighter-weight foam, basically I think what you’re doing is using a foam that has a higher air quantity. The cells in that foam are bigger and they’re trapping more air and that lightens up the overall weight of the foam.

But, at the end of the day I believe, again not being an engineer and not knowing all the details about it, EPS (expanded polystyrene) is EPS.”

NOTE: Chris emailed the official answer the next day (along with a couple others). – Bz

CS:

The chemical composition of the foam is the same [as in Styrofoam coolers], but the quality of the foam in regard to the size/shape/consistency of the foam bubbles at the time of expansion during production is higher in the foam used in helmets.”

Bz:

Of the materials, EPS, SXP, EPP and SEPP, which best protects in case of impact? Which prevents the most energy from reaching the head and brain?

CS:

I have not been able to get information from our engineers regarding these various types of foam. My limited understanding on this is that SXP foam is a version of EPS foam and is required for use in CPSC-certified helmets and also mandated for use in the state of California. I believe that this is the industry standard for use.”

Bz:

Is one of these materials destined to be the “future” of cycling helmets? Or will EPS remain the standard for the foreseeable future? If it will, will you explain why? Could you (or one of your engineers, perhaps) give me a list of the advantages and disadvantages, the benefits and drawbacks for each material?

[This answer was emailed after the interview. – Bz]

CS:

Whatever version of EPS foam (SXP) is being used now is going to be the standard in the foreseeable future as this raw material is readily available and currently most economical to use in manufacturing. Should another foam be determined to offer greater protection and the industry or regulative agencies determine that it should be used at that time, a switch will be made. I don’t see this happening in the foreseeable future, however. Keep in mind that EPS foam is not just used in the bicycle industry but other sports industries that require the use of a helmet, as well as the immense motorcycle helmet industry. I would expect the motorcycle helmet market will drive any significant changes to materials used in the bicycle helmet industry.”

Bz:

Manufacturers often have to choose a foam density that will pass impact tests based on the number and size of vents. A helmet with larger vents or more vents, will have thinner vent walls/ribs so it will require a foam that is more dense.

This means that you have a smaller harder surface area smashing into your skull in a crash.

So even though two helmets may have identical numbers in an impact test, are helmets with larger or more vents actually less safe in crashes?

CS:

Ummmmmmmm… that is a question that is impossible for me to answer without any kind of testing data to prove it one way or the other.

I mean, you can speculate all you want on that theory. Unless you’re going to get helmets and you’re going to go out and going to set up a testing standard, and actually get empirical data that says something one way or the other, then it’s basically just speculation at this point. That’s not something that I’d be able to comment on.

Every manufacturer is in the same boat. What manufacturers are facing is the demand of the market. I may have said to you, I’ve said to other people, you can make the safest helmet in the world. You can manufacture a hundred thousand of them and promptly go out of business because nobody is going to buy them.

People want helmets that, depending on the price point and the level of consumer you’re talking about these are going to be different priorities, but people want a helmet that looks stylish, they want a helmet that is lightweight and comfortable to wear, and they want a helmet that’s going to offer some airflow.

Again, you can make the safest helmet in the world with no air vents, a huge amount of foam, but nobody is going to wear it. Or very, very few people are going to wear it. Certainly not enough to keep your company viable and in business.

You’ve got to match your product to the demands of the consumers and match your product to what competitors are offering. And if you can offer A, B and C features that kind of exceed what the competitors are doing at that price point, and offer increased safety or better performance or whatever, that’s where you can distinguish yourself in the market.

But ultimately, regrettably, if safety is the only goal in helmet manufacturing, then you’re not going to survive as a company. As a consumer, yeah, it can offer benefit, but that’s just not what the marketplace is looking for.”

Bz:

Narrower vent walls also mean more squared edges, which are inherently worse in crashes than rounded edges. They’re more likely to stick or to get snagged and jerk helmet off your head leaving you with no protection, or to jerk your head around violently and increase rotational injuries.

This is also true of the “aero” tail on many helmets.

It seems that things done specifically to increase the value of a helmet too often create a less safe product, but are allowed in the name of higher marketability and profit.

CS:

What I would say about that is… I have not seen, I mean, I’ve seen anecdotal evidence and people’s comments about this. But, I have not seen any testing data that says that a helmet with edges on it of some kind, or aero helmets, are inherently less safe than a perfectly round helmet or something that exactly matches the curvature of your head.

It may very well be the case. But, again, I’ve seen no data that proves that, and I’m not aware of anybody who’s actually testing that.

Again, I’m not saying that it cannot very well be the case, but what I will say is that based on the overwhelming number of photographs and post-crash stories that I get from our customers – and I can only assume that other manufacturers get them from their customers – this phenomenon of an edge of a helmet or the sharp corner of a helmet or the aero tail of a time trial helmet specifically causing an injury to the rider, I haven’t seen a case of it.

So, what we could be talking about is a very real scenario, but one that is so unlikely in a real-world situation, that it makes it impractical to take into account when designing a helmet.

No helmet can protect a rider in every situation, due to speed, due to the angle of the impact, objects in the road, objects off the side of the road, the surface that the rider is riding on. There are too many variables to take into account to say that this helmet is going to protect the rider the best in every situation.

So, to look at a particular feature of a helmet, regardless of how commonly it’s used and say, ‘this is something that I’m concerned about,’ the chance of that being a problem in a real world situation – while existing – could be so remote that it’s not a concern that a manufacturer can or should consider.

Bz:

Could you address the issue of visors shattering, or the edges slicing riders’ faces, or snagging during a collision and violently jerking the riders’ head around and increasing rotational damage?

CS:

Again, hypothetical or anecdotal situations are always going to happen. I don’t know. You’ve got a segment of the market that wants a feature. And whether they are aware of the risks of that feature or not, in the case of a visor they want a visor on their helmet.

Obviously, the visors from Lazer, the visors from other manufacturers, are designed to withstand impact without shattering. I know that I’ve got a number of visors from our Oasis helmet, the all-mountain helmet I was telling you about, I can twist that visor 180 degrees and it’s not going to break, it’s not going to shatter. It may deform, but it’s not going to shatter. It’s not that fragile.

If you leave it out in the sun for five years and the UV rays cause the plastic to deteriorate, at that point it might shatter.”

Bz:

Does Lazer, or any manufacturer that you’re aware of, make a helmet that’s… maximally safe? Just, okay, here’s the absolute safest helmet you can buy. It may be ugly. It may not be stylish, but if this is what you want, here it is. Is that helmet out there?

CS:

Hmmmm. I can tell you on behalf of Lazer that we do not make a helmet that we specifically market like that. I can’t say that Lazer does not make that helmet, because we’re not testing the helmets to any kind of standard that says ‘this is the safest helmet.’ I don’t know what that test would look like.

I can tell you personally that I think the current drop tests are not satisfactory. But, I’m not an engineer, I would not be comfortable being responsible to design what I thought would be the ultimate helmet testing standard.

So, again, without some kind of benchmark to say, ‘Okay, this is the test that will determine what the safest bicycle helmet in the world is, I couldn’t identify which of our helmets, or any other manufacturer’s helmet, might meet that criteria.

Without discounting the fact that this helmet may not already exist and that Lazer may be making that helmet, without some kind of way to verify that in a reliable and clean testing situation, that’s not something I’d be able to determine.”

Bz:

You’ve told me that Lazer Sport manufactures its helmets in China, but some companies manufacture in Europe. Is there a difference in the quality of helmets manufactured in one place vs. the other?

CS:

My feeling is that the quality of manufacturing between China and Europe is about the same but the production costs in Europe are higher. So you can get the same quality helmet from a Chinese supplier for a more economical price. The quality of products coming from China has improved dramatically in the last ten years and Lazer has a very close relationship with our production facility which allows us to develop and incorporate new concepts and innovation into our helmets very quickly after design.”

Bz:

You’ve mentioned before that you’re not happy with the current testing standard. You mentioned that you aren’t happy with the drop test because it doesn’t match real world situations.

Does Lazer, or anyone, test more “real world?” Different angles? Skid? Just whatever might make the standard better?

CS:

When we design a helmet we’re designing it for the testing standard of that market [U.S., Australia, Europe – Bz]. We’re partnering with another organization which is using a different testing procedure. I might have alluded to that in the article that I referenced [on his own blog, here – Bz]. The organization is called MIPS. We are, I know that POC and maybe one other company which I’m not sure of [also are]. We are partnering with MIPS using a different testing procedure, in order to address what I feel are more real world conditions.”

Bz:

MIPS is not just a system, they’ve also modified the testing standard?

CS:

They’ve developed their own testing standard. It’s not a stationary helmet with an object coming into it, it’s not a stationary object with a helmet coming into it. They’re doing a more dynamic test to the helmet.”

Bz:

Is a helmet designed for one function, maybe mountain bike (MTB) riding, less safe if used for maybe road riding than a helmet made specifically for road riding?

CS:

Well, it depends.

One example is our high end Helium helmet, which we consider a road helmet, vs. our Oasiz MTB helmet or all-mountain helmet.

The Helium helmet, it’s the pinnacle of our line. It’s made using our most sophisticated manufacturing technology in order to make it as lightweight as possible.

Whereas the Oasiz helmet, it uses the same manufacturing process, but it’s a more significant helmet in that it’s meatier and there’s more material that comes down the back of the rider’s head. Because again, the demands of the market. Riders who are doing this all-mountain type of riding, they’re looking for a helmet that offers more protection down the back of the rider’s head and has more material that the helmet is built around.

Bz:

So there are features that make a helmet an MTB helmet or a road helmet?

CS:

There are features that we are offering in order to address the needs of the MTB market, or the road bike market.

But, what I’ll tell you is, like in the case of the Luna womens professional MTB team, we equip them all with the Helium helmet, because they want the super-light helmet

So, someone who’s looking for a type of helmet, whether or not at the end of the day it’s for the type of riding they’re doing, the crash that they actually might find themselves involved in, whether or not the Oasiz helmet is going to offer them more protection, there’s too many variables to take into account. But in the case of the all-mountain segment, A, B and C features are what those riders are looking for, so we incorporate those features into the helmet.”

Bz:

Ok, it’s based on rider preferences within a category. What MTB riders want in that line, what road riders want in that line.

How do you gather the information about what various types of riders want in which line or type of helmets?

CS:

We look at what – if it’s a new segment for us to get into – we look at what consumers are already buying in that segment, as far as the features that they’re looking for. Then we look at, okay, are there ways that we can improve upon those features, is there a way that we can offer the same protection with less material, to lighten up the overall weight of the helmet? Can we integrate our features and technologies that we use on our high-end helmets at a lower-price helmet and set our product apart from what the competition is doing, by a better fit or better airflow, better chin buckle, better visor.”

Bz:

Do you take feedback from the people and teams that you sponsor?

CS:

Absolutely.”

Bz:

I remember seeing a crash test comparison of a Smart car and a Toyota Corolla, at 70 mph into giant concrete blocks. The cages of both cars held up amazingly well.

But after showing us that, the host mentioned that it doesn’t matter how well the cage protects the body, the person inside the car in a 70-mph crash is still very likely to die from organ damage due to the forces involved in rapid deceleration.

Translating that to helmet design, it seems obvious that there’s only so much protection a helmet can offer. Most of us will never crash at 70 mph, but a combination of forces, especially for racers, could equal that.

What are the limits of helmet protection?

Does that $150 or $300 helmet protect significantly better than the $25 helmet?

I know there’s no standard scenario, so no standard maximum safe speed for helmet effectiveness, but can you give a range?

What is the upper limit of speed for impacts from the side? From the front? From the top? From the rear?

CS:

No. No. At the end of the day, no. There are too many variables to take into account to even to begin to guess at that.

Again, without any empirical data or any kind of reliable testing it would be irresponsible for anyone to make that kind of recommendation.

I can tell you that in a $25 helmet vs. a $300 helmet, there may some features built into that $300 helmet that might help improve the odds that the rider will escape from a crash unscathed, for instance the RBS, the Rigidity Brace System that we build into our higher-end helmets, and again that’s another component of that higher manufacturing technology. We can introduce more materials into the helmet when we’re building these multiple pieces. But, what the RBS is, it’s a skeleton that’s inside of the foam and in the event of an impact the skeleton helps keep the foam together and around the rider’s head. So if there are additional lower-speed impacts, the rider still has foam around their head and is offered that additional protection.

So, in our higher-end helmets we have that RBS that may offer that protection.

But again, there’s too many variables. Is the rider going to crash and land directly on their head? Are they going to crash and land on another body part that can cause rapid deceleration so that the rider’s head is hitting at a much lower speed? Is there an object in the road or off the side of the road that the rider’s head could hit?

Again, it’s impossible and in my opinion it would be irresponsible without a standard test, to say that ‘you can wear our helmet at speeds up to 50 mph and be assured that in the event of a crash you’re not going to have a problem.’

Because, honestly, you look at Natasha Richardson, the actress who was skiing on a bunny hill. She was standing still and fell over and had a traumatic brain injury and within… six hours? Eight hours? She was dead.

You can trip and land on the floor at almost zero miles an hour and suffer a significant brain injury that can cause death.

Bicycle helmets can help. They can offer considerable help depending upon the circumstances of the crash. But, at the end of the day there’s just too many variables to take into account to say that this helmet will offer protection up to speeds up to this amount.”

Bz:

As in the example they gave with that 70-mph car crash, where it didn’t matter how well the car cage protected the body, the organs inside could not survive, is there a point or a speed where it doesn’t matter how well the helmet protects the skull, the brain inside cannot survive?

At 30 mph? 50 mph? I don’t know…

CS:

I don’t know either. Because I’m not aware of any test that has defined that. Because ultimately what you’re talking about is the speed… it’s not the speed that your head hits the object, it’s the speed at which your brain hits the inside of the skull. Because that’s where the brain injury happens.

Your head can hit an object at whatever speed. But because your brain is not fixed to the inside of your head, there’s a delayed reaction between when your head hits the ground and when your brain decelerates by smashing into the skull.

You’re talking about survivability? It depends what part of the brain hits the inside of the skull. There’s certain parts of the brain that are more durable than others.”

Bz:

So it’s things like, do you hit directly or is it a glancing blow, is it a front impact, or on the side or back, not just how fast you’re going, that make a big difference?

CS:

Exactly.

Again, there’s too many variables to take into account. Because of what is happening – not just outside your head, but inside your head – in just fractions of a second, it can make a critical difference whether or not a head impact and injury is survivable or not.

I don’t know what the speed of Wouter Weylandt was in the Giro d’Italia when he crashed. I know that they were descending. From what I saw of that descent it didn’t look to be an extremely high-speed descent. If the speed was over 40 mph [64 kph – Bz] I would have been amazed. But, you hit your head in a particular way, it can be fatal, regardless of what you’ve got on your head.”

 

The following questions were submitted by @CycleGirl108, a friend on twitter, following several discussions we had concerning Wouter Weylandt’s crash at the Giro and Chris Horner’s and Tom Boonen’s crashes at the Tour. She knew we were doing this interview and has a keen interest in helmet safety and helmet advocacy. She emailed her questions to be posed to Chris Smith during the interview.

CG108:

They’ve used hard Styrofoam as the main cushion in helmets for 30 years; why not shift to gel or something with more give?

CS:

Good question. Why haven’t they?

I’d have to talk to my boss and the engineers.”

OFFICIAL EMAILED ANSWER:

Two reasons EPS foam is currently being used:

• It’s currently readily available and mass-produced, so it’s easy for manufacturers to obtain for a reasonable cost while still offering good protection for the rider’s head
• Gel and similar materials have been tested but the overall helmet weight when used with these materials has yielded unacceptable results.”

CG108:

Is it possible to have a helmet which grips the head directly, and doesn’t need a chin strap?

CS:

It is possible? Sure.

But that kind of flies in the face the rotational injury phenomenon. You actually need to have some kind of system for the helmet to move independent of the rider’s head.

Maybe you could do it. Maybe you could develop a system that grabs the rider’s head so tightly, but still allows the shell to move independent of that. I don’t know how comfortable that would be.

I think you could do it, but you’d sacrifice everything in the way of helmet comfort to achieve that.”

CG108:

I’ve been told that above a certain speed or impact pressure, the helmet may keep the skull intact, but brains inside will liquefy. True? That is, it will be like shaking a raw egg: Scrambled in the shell. If so, what speed?

CS:

‘Liquify’ is bit extreme, but it is true. I can’t assign a speed to that. Because it could happen at high speed, it could happen at low speed.

The speed of the rider and the speed of the bike has nothing to do with it. It’s the speed of the head, how and where it impacts whatever surface.

You can come off your bike at 70 mph but you may have decelerated to under 50 by the time your head hits the ground. Who knows, by what part of your body hits first.

But having said that, regardless of speed, yes, you can hit your head hard enough where you brain, because your brain is not fixed to the interior of your skull, you can hit your head hard enough that your brain will impact the inside of your skull and cause inter-cranial bleeding. That can be fatal, and quickly fatal.”

CG108:

The current standards call for protection when dropped from two meters onto an anvil. Isn’t that a lot slower than a typical rider goes? It seems to me that a recreational rider goes about 20 mph, which is quite a bit faster than a dropped helmet, so shouldn’t the standard be made higher?

CS:

Possibly. But, I can say that in the case of the testing standard, they take into account the fact that another portion of the rider’s body, more often than not, impacts the ground first, which causes rapid deceleration.

It’s very rare that the rider’s head hits first at full speed.

The testing standard was developed to account for, I think, 14 mph. Because that’s what they determined was the average crash speed when the head actually did have impact. So that was, for better or worse, whether you agree with it or not, that was taken into account when they designed the test.”

CG108:

Can helmets be improved to absorb more impact and protect wearers from falls at higher speeds, without making the helmets so cumbersome that bicyclists won’t wear them?

CS:

Can it be done? Mmmmmmmmm, anything can be done, depending on how much the consumer wants to spend.

If you have enough money to throw at a project, you can do just about anything. But, you’re going to price it out of the competitive market.”

CG108:

I understand that based on skull and brain physiology, it’s hard to protect the brain from sloshing inside the skull during a high-speed impact. Nevertheless, will it someday be possible for a helmet to protect more against concussion?

CS:

Concussion goes back to that rotational brain injury, which accounts for the overwhelming majority [of head injuries] in cycling and motorcycling. That’s what we’re trying to occomplish with the MIPS system.

One thing I’ll tell you, this is also becoming something that motorcycle helmet companies are taking seriously.

I don’t know if you’re aware, but Lazer started out as a motorcycle helmet manufacturing company.

Just about two years ago, based in Brussels, was a motorcycle and bicycle and air-sport [helmet] manufacturing company.

The managers of the bicycle division bought that division out.

Now, Lazer Helmets, based in Brussels, still makes motorcycle helmets. Lazer Sport, based in Antwerp, is the bicycle division.

So there still is a Lazer motorcycle helmet manufacturing company. And they have addressed this rotational brain injury phenomenon by coming up with a helmet with a feature called ‘super skin.’

Basically what this skin is, it’s like a scalp that’s applied to the outer portion of the helmet. If you think about it, your scalp is designed to prevent rotational brain injury.

So, at walking speeds, you trip and you fall, you hit your head. Your scalp, for just a fraction of a second, milliseconds, your scalp will adhere to whatever your head hits, just for that fraction of a second, and allow your skull to travel in it’s original direction. It’s just that few milliseconds of allowing the skull to continue in its original direction that can dramatically reduce rotational brain injury.

That’s the job of the scalp at a walking and running pace. You get on a 50 mph or 70 mph motorcycle, your scalp is obviously not up to that challenge. So what Lazer motorcycle helmets did, working with another independent group, they developed this ‘super skin’ technology which is basically a scalp that is attached, is bonded, to the outer surface of a motorcycle helmet.

If you grab one of these helmets and press your thumb on it, you can actually move the outer surface of the helmet versus the shell underneath it. It’s accomplishing the same goal. So, at 50, 60, 70 mph if you come off the motorcycle and you hit your head, for that millisecond, that super skin/scalp will adhere to the road and allow the rest of the helmet to continue in the original direction of travel.

Just that millisecond of energy absorption tested out to a dramatic reduction in the frequency and chance of rotational brain injury.”

Bz:

Is there any chance that we’ll see that on a bicycle helmet?

CS:

Well, maybe. We were pursuing that at a time when we were all one company.

The problem is, a motorcycle helmet that has that, you can’t have any air vents in it. It’s got to be one solid scalp surface for it to work.

We were looking at maybe offering a full-face DH [downhill – Bz] helmet without any vents that had that technology. But now that we’re different companies, I can’t speak to us using that technology in bicycle helmets.

With what MIPS is doing, it’s accomplishing the same thing, it’s just coming at it from a different direction. Instead of having something on the exterior of the helmet, we’re working with them to have this system on the interior of the helmet to accomplish the same goal”

CG108:

In discussions with friends, they ask why they should they bother with a helmet, if it won’t protect against concussion. I point out that your head is a really bad place on which to get road rash. Therefore it is equally important to have the helmet be sufficiently strong to protect the head when the rider falls. When Jens Voigt fell on live TV during the 2009 Tour de France, his helmet got mashed and mangled and scraped – but saved his head from receiving that damage. He still had a concussion, but he didn’t leave his brains out on the road, which would have happened if he hadn’t had the helmet on.

CS:

Yeah, absolutely! Again, time and time again, I get email stories and photographs from people who send me pictures of their smashed up helmet, overjoyed that their helmet did its job of protecting their head. Now, honestly, very few if any of these riders suffered a rotational brain injury. Because, that’s a fairly serious issue and they probably would have mentioned intercranial bleeding and having to go through a procedure fairly quickly that involves removing a part of the skull and allowing the brain to expand and swell into that area.

These are people who just hit their head in a straight line incident and didn’t have a brain injury. But, without that helmet, a skull fracture is serious business. Whether you have a brain injury or not, a fractured skull is a very, very significant injury. Bicycle helmets do a very good job preventing that injury.

If you’re only going to use a safety device because it will protect you against the most catastrophic injury that you can imagine, yeah, you may as well not use any safety device at all. But, if you use a safety device knowing that in a great number of situations this safety device is going to prevent injury, who wants to suffer? Who wants a skull fracture, road rash, skull abrasions, or all the different kinds of injuries that you can possibly get. Even facial injuries, a helmet is not going to protect facial injuries. But just the fact that it keeps your forehead elevated can help reduced facial and vision injuries.

So, there’s all kinds of different ways that a helmet can help, help keep the rider’s head safe, not taking into account the effects of rotational brain injury that make it absolutely worthwhile to wear a bike helmet every time you ride.”

 

Stay tuned for Part 2 of Bikezilla’s interiew with Chris Smith, coming up later this week.