Knowledge Level: Beginner
If you’re racing or riding a British Cycling sportive, a helmet is compulsory, most clubs insist on them and the majority of riders when out training now opt to wear one. However buying one can be a confusing experience so we’ve asked Lazer, British Cycling’s official helmet supplier, for their advice.
Fit and comfort
The most important thing when buying a helmet is that it fits correctly, is secure on your head and is comfortable. Look for an adjustment system on the cradle, such as our Rollsys system, that offers fine tuning and can also be operated on the fly. You can’t beat going into a bike shop and trying a range of helmets on and this is definitely preferable to buying blind online.
Protection
In Europe, CE certification offers reassurance that the helmet you’re buying meets a verified level of protection. Don’t think that big and bulky means more protection or vice versa. Our Genesis model weighs just 190g (size small) but is still, of course, CE certified. By shaping the helmet in a specific way to protect the most important parts of your head, our engineers managed to make it a very light helmet while keeping it as safe as possible. Moreover, the inner nylon cage construction of the helmet enabled them to limit the amount of EPS (foam) used and optimise its material properties. After painstaking development and exhaustive internal testing, the Genesis is now independently ranked as the safest road helmet in the world according to Virginia Tech.
Weight
You should be able to forget you’re wearing a well-designed and well fitted helmet and there’s no doubt that a lighter helmet will be more comfortable than a heavier model. At only 190g, the Lazer Genesis definitely ticks this box. The weight you save in choosing a lightweight helmet probably isn’t going to make you any faster up those climbs but, over the course of a long day in the saddle, any strain taken off your neck has to be a good thing.
Ventilation
Along with weight, the other “forget you’re wearing it” requirements of a helmet are ventilation and cooling. Vents suck air into the front of the helmet, channel it over your head and then expel it out of the back. We ran numerous ventilation tests on the Genesis, putting the helmet on a mannequin in a wind tunnel and measuring the heat loss during cycling. Overall, the helmet reached a cooling performance of 108%. Meaning that riding with the Genesis cools your head 8% more than riding with no helmet at all!
In winter you might not want all of that cold air channeled over your head and if you’re racing all of that ventilation can have a negative effect on aerodynamics. Fortunately, the Genesis is available to buy with Lazer’s Aeroshell, a removable cover that can be simply clipped over the helmet depending on weather conditions or racing requirements.
Looks
Although at the bottom of our list of priorities, if a helmet looks good and makes you feel good, you’re far more likely to wear it. No-one wants to look like a mushroom on their bike and, as with weight, a helmet can be sleek, stylish and still deliver top protection. The Genesis is our slimmest helmet to date whilst maintaining a market leading level of protection.
The Lazer Genesis helmet is available on freewheel.co.uk.
