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TECH NEWS

Bontrager unveil new pro-level helmet

Leopard Trek team will be using the new Oracle in 2011

The Leopard Trek pro cycling team, home of the Schleck brothers and Fabian Cancellara for 2011, have announced that they’ll be using Bontrager’s new Oracle helmet for the forthcoming race season.

A Trek in-house brand, Bontrager are supplying Leopard Trek with everything from wheels to bottle cages too. One of the key design objectives for the Oracle helmet was to make it low profile.

“No-one wants to look like they have a bucket on their head,” said Bontrager Helmet Product Manager, Al Clark. Good ventilation was another central consideration.

The Oracle uses an in-moulded carbon-fibre skeleton to provide the structural integrity and load dispersal needed to create large vents in the close-fitting design.

“Our expertise in carbon fibre and our experience in analyzing air flow with various other products gave us considerable advantages when designing the Oracle,” said Clark. “Bontrager has been designing carbon-fibre parts for nearly a decade and our engineers have spent countless hours analyzing how wind forces interact with cyclists and their equipment. That decade of knowledge paid huge dividends in Oracle’s engineering and design.”

Other features of the Oracle include internal channeling to help pull air through the helmet and over the head, a Headmaster one-hand-adjustable fit system, anti-microbial pads, and lockdown strap dividers. There’s also a built-in brow band that’s designed to draw air over the forehead for improved cooling.

The new Oracle will see its first racing action at Leopard Trek’s ProTour debut at the Santos Tour Down Under starting this weekend.

Oracle helmets will be available in the spring in three sizes and five colours, including a Leopard Trek team edition.

Mat has been in cycling media since 1996, on titles including BikeRadar, Total Bike, Total Mountain Bike, What Mountain Bike and Mountain Biking UK, and he has been editor of 220 Triathlon and Cycling Plus. Mat has been road.cc technical editor for over a decade, testing bikes, fettling the latest kit, and trying out the most up-to-the-minute clothing. We send him off around the world to get all the news from launches and shows too. He has won his category in Ironman UK 70.3 and finished on the podium in both marathons he has run. Mat is a Cambridge graduate who did a post-grad in magazine journalism, and he is a winner of the Cycling Media Award for Specialist Online Writer. Now over 50, he's riding road and gravel bikes most days for fun and fitness rather than training for competitions.

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