The Tour de France finally got underway with a 13.2 km time trial around the city of Copenhagen. While Yves Lampard's shocking victory, the untimely arrival of the weather, and Geraint Thomas' gilet blunder would be the big stories of the day, it was something else entirely that caught our attention.

Like a scene from a Mel Brooks parody movie, a rather wild helmet made its appearance.

The first of these was the pink POC Tempor with a dragon face on the front, ridden by Swiss time trial powerhouse Stefan Bissegger (EF Education Easypost). The dragon was the star of the collaboration between EF and Palace Skateboards, which also redesigned the kit and bikes.

In any other bike race, if EF showed up wearing these, everyone would be talking about it, but not today; sorry POC, but your reign at the top of the weird helmet hierarchy has come to an end.

Make no mistake, the POC Tempor is an insane beast, regularly compared to Star Wars stormtroopers for its size and shape; it was first unveiled at the London Olympics ten years ago, but quickly fell out of favor for being so ridiculous. But like an ugly duckling growing into a beautiful swan, as the cycling world's understanding of aerodynamics grew, the POC Tempor became a cult favorite helmet for serious time trial riders. For riders who could lock their heads into an aero position, this helmet was by far the fastest, allowing for smoother airflow over the head and shoulders. [Thanks to the POC, and perhaps to our understanding of the importance of aerodynamics, cyclists no longer worry about looking weird. Dan Bigum, a new hire at Ineos Grenadiers and longtime aerodynamics geek, once told Cycling Weekly: "I've always joked that if I could go fast, I'd gladly wear a giant penis suit.

Thankfully, we're not quite at that stage yet, but Bigam thinks it might have something to do with our next weird helmet, the Cask Bambino Pro ridden by Tom Pidcock and Adam Yates. Frankly, it is not the model of the helmet that is important here, but its size. Yates is particularly petite, indeed a GC contender, but this helmet appears to be wider than their shoulders. This aero performance is clear. The larger the helmet, the more smoothly the air can be expelled around the shoulders, which has poor aero performance, theoretically reducing overall aerodynamic drag.

In addition, these oversized helmets also appeared to be fitted with what could only be described as a spoiler, a raised material several centimeters deep protruding from the lower edge of the lens.

However, rather than being a ploy to increase downforce to aid traction when cornering (which may have been helpful for some riders), it was intended to catch air and channel it upward and over the shoulders rather than flowing directly from the helmet to the rider's body is expected.

They looked as if they were wearing large ski goggles and reminded me of Peter Sagan's podium antics of yesteryear.

Ironically, Peter Sagan provided a good opportunity for the last strange helmet of the day, and a rare marketing blunder for Specialized. Sagan was one of more than a dozen riders who took to the starting podium wearing the new Specialized TT5. The helmet was just released yesterday and its design is pretty wild.

Much larger than the alternative, its flat back is like the downtube of an aero frame, and its elongated sides come down around the ears and stay about an inch away from the face. Since its launch, it has been compared to everything from Daft Punk to Darth Vader, but no mention has yet been made of head socks.

The cloth is built into the inside of the helmet. Specialized wants to call this a head sock, but it is simply a balaclava. It is built into the helmet and cannot be removed, even for washing. Its design is to smooth the flow of air over the wearer's face, ears, and hair, while at the same time keeping the helmet stable and providing some degree of rotational protection. cyclists won't mind, since it claims to shave 26 seconds off their time in a 40 km time trial. They don't mind looking funny if it makes them faster.

Specialized assembled a huge team of engineers and marketing people in Copenhagen to introduce the new helmets to the world media. And it was about to be a slam-dunk perfect Friday when their sponsored rider Yves Lampaert surprised the world by beating riders like Wout Van Alt, Filippo Ganna, and Tadej Pogachar. Problem was, he was wearing his old ones.

Still, we talk about it here and you read about it here. It may be true that there is no bad press.