With each year, they seem to get bigger and more bulbous – and this year’s crop is quite something.
“Don’t look at me, I’m hideous.”
As sports go, cycling is fairly light on shame. The riders race in bulge-revealing clothing, then have vigorous massages with just a handtowel shielding genitals from camera lenses. They guzzle down bicarbonate soda and tart cherry juice without so much as a second thought; they piss in little jars in front of testers, and present the crooks of their arms for prying needles to uncover chemical misdeeds. These are the physical sacrifices that the sport demands – the body as an open book.
But there is one area where pro cyclists seem to acknowledge their own shame, and that comes once or twice in each Tour de France. The time trial – the race of truth – is cycling at its most essential, rider against the clock to the finish line as fast as possible. To ramp up that speed, aerodynamic efficiency is the name of the game, and that means silly bikes, silly clothing, and most especially silly helmets. Each year, I swear, they get bigger and more bulbous – consuming the head, snuggling into the shoulders, thrusting forward like the nose of a curious shark.
Tour de France time trial helmets, ranked by how little I would like to be in them
Enough. This is enough.
Beneath these fishbowls, I feel, you can see something rare in the eyes of these athletes. An understanding that in this silly sport, they have reached peak silliness. Gasping for breath, peering through the tinted perspex, they are giving 100% of themselves – but there is a sliver of self-awareness that remains, a grim mix of acceptance and sorrow that the pursuit of performance has brought them to this point, once again.
This is the TT helmet crop of the Tour de France, 2025. Let us wallow in their shame together.
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