Most of the equipment discussion around LA28 will inevitably focus on bikes. New frames will appear, cockpits will become more refined and national programmes will spend the next two years looking for increasingly small gains in position, drivetrain efficiency and aerodynamics.
The ABUS TimeShifter is less exotic. It is already a commercially available time trial helmet, developed with Swiss Side and originally presented around road time trial and triathlon use. Yet the more ABUS has revealed about its development, the more interesting it becomes from a track cycling perspective.
The numbers are difficult to ignore. Development involved 112 CFD simulations, 194 wind tunnel runs and 39 velodrome measurements, with ABUS deliberately testing different head and arm positions rather than building the helmet around one idealised laboratory pose. The company makes the point that helmet performance is highly individual: rider size, shoulder width, arm position and head angle all change the way the helmet interacts with the body.
That is familiar territory for anyone involved in pursuit aerodynamics. What makes the TimeShifter unusual is how strongly it appears to have performed despite those variables.
Beyond the 26.3 watt headline
The figure ABUS will understandably promote most heavily is a maximum measured saving of 26.3 watts at 50 km/h against its previous GameChanger TT 1.1. It is an eye-catching result, although not one that can simply be transferred into a pursuit calculation. It came from a particular athlete, visor and yaw range, and helmet testing is too rider-specific for any single result to become a universal claim.
The wider dataset is probably more significant.
In ABUS' standardised dummy wind tunnel comparison, the TimeShifter recorded a 12.6 watt improvement against the GameChanger TT 1.1 reference. Two unnamed competitor helmets recorded improvements of 7.6 watts and 4.2 watts respectively. ABUS says the TimeShifter prototype was the fastest helmet measured across all of its dummy test configurations.
That tells a more useful story than the maximum figure alone.
A pursuit coach is unlikely to be interested in a helmet because it once produced an exceptional result on somebody else. The attraction is that ABUS appears to have found a shape that continues to work across different positions and rider profiles. That gives a national programme a strong starting point before its own individual testing begins.
The way the TimeShifter was developed reinforces that. ABUS and Swiss Side used combinations of head-up, head-down, flat-arm and angled-arm positions to create four representative rider setups for CFD and wind tunnel work. Rather than expecting the rider to accommodate the helmet, the aim was to make the helmet less sensitive to the inevitable differences between riders.
For a four-rider pursuit team, that is particularly relevant.
Four riders will rarely need exactly the same solution
A team pursuit quartet may use matching bikes, wheels and skinsuits, but aerodynamically the four riders remain very different objects.
Shoulder width changes the airflow around a helmet. So does torso length, extension height and elbow position. Some riders can comfortably maintain an extremely low head position while others are quicker with the head slightly higher. Even within one rider, the shape presented to the air can alter as fatigue develops through the final kilometre.
This is where the TimeShifter's visor system becomes more than a product feature.
ABUS offers Narrow and Wide visor profiles which alter the effective width of the helmet and the airflow between the helmet, rider and cockpit. A Cut version has also been developed for very low and compact positions. The differences are described by ABUS as relatively small but measurable, particularly as head position or yaw changes.
It opens up an interesting possibility for pursuit teams. Four riders might all test fastest in a TimeShifter without necessarily using the same configuration. A narrower rider with tightly positioned arms may favour one visor, while a broader rider could favour another. A rider using particularly high hands and a low head position may find the Cut visor integrates better with the complete position.
That is much closer to how high-performance pursuit equipment is now developed. The question is no longer simply which helmet is fastest, but which helmet is fastest on this rider, in this position, with this cockpit.
The TimeShifter gives teams several ways of answering that question without changing the helmet shell itself.
Why pursuit could be its most interesting application
The TimeShifter was not designed solely for the track, but a velodrome provides an unusually good environment in which to exploit what ABUS has created.
Road time trial testing has to account for changing yaw and more variable rider positions. On the track the conditions and movement are considerably more repeatable. That makes it easier to isolate small differences between helmets, visors and rider positions and then repeat the test under closely comparable conditions.
It does not make ABUS' road-derived wattage figures directly transferable to pursuit. What it does is make the helmet relatively straightforward for a national programme to evaluate properly.
That distinction is important because the TimeShifter does not need every rider to reproduce the 26.3 watt headline to become valuable. If a rider already using a good TT helmet finds five watts, three watts or even something smaller but repeatable, the change may still be worthwhile when the equipment requires no alteration to the bike and little adaptation from the athlete.
Across a four-rider pursuit squad, the opportunity becomes more interesting again.
This is also one of the reasons ABUS' emphasis on consistency across different positions may ultimately be more useful than its biggest published number. Pursuit riders are not mannequins holding one perfect pose. The helmet still has to work when the rider's head moves slightly, when the arms are positioned differently and when one athlete looks nothing like the next.
ABUS appears to have designed around that reality rather than trying to eliminate it.
A well-timed arrival
The timing of the TimeShifter is another reason it could become important.
The UCI's 2027 helmet regulations create a clearer separation between Traditional Helmets and Time Trial Helmets. Individual Pursuit and Team Pursuit remain within the TT helmet category, alongside Team Sprint and the Kilometre, while the June 2026 amendment also allows a Time Trial Helmet for the flying 200 qualifying ride.
National programmes therefore have to revisit helmet choices during the LA28 cycle regardless of whether the TimeShifter existed.
That creates an unusually open market. The helmets used at Paris do not automatically become the helmets used in Los Angeles, particularly as positions, cockpits and rider line-ups continue to change. What tested best on one pursuiter in 2024 may not remain the answer four years later.
The TimeShifter arrives just as that process begins.
Several pursuit programmes have already started testing it. The published figures are simply too interesting for a serious aerodynamic programme to dismiss without producing its own answer.
Some riders will undoubtedly find another helmet faster. That is inherent in helmet aerodynamics and ABUS itself acknowledges it. The interesting part will be how often that happens.
If the company's own testing translates reasonably well into independent national-team work, the TimeShifter could become a common sight in pursuit long before LA28.
The unusual Olympic equipment story
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the TimeShifter is that none of this technology is hidden.
Olympic track cycling normally produces equipment stories in reverse. A new component appears beneath a national-team rider, photographs circulate, very little technical information is released and commercial availability follows later.
The TimeShifter is already sitting on the shelf.
It has gone through CFD, wind tunnel and velodrome development, has been raced successfully at World Championship level on the road and is available to anyone wanting to test it. Marlen Reusser's 2025 World Championship time trial victory does not tell us how fast the helmet will be on a pursuit rider, but it does demonstrate that the product has moved well beyond the development stage.
That accessibility changes the nature of the story.
A national team can put the TimeShifter into its testing programme tomorrow, but so can an individual pursuiter without access to a federation equipment project. The aerodynamic benefit may be different for each rider, but the equipment being evaluated is fundamentally the same.
There will be much more elaborate technology on display in Los Angeles. New bikes will attract the attention, and some of the most interesting developments will probably remain hidden until they appear beneath riders at major championships.
The TimeShifter could prove more straightforward.
ABUS has produced its fastest TT helmet to date and published enough data to make a serious case for testing it. Its multi-position approach fits the realities of pursuit unusually well, the interchangeable visors add another level of rider-specific optimisation, and it arrives just as teams are beginning to define their equipment packages for LA28.
Whether it ultimately becomes the dominant pursuit helmet will be decided in wind tunnels and velodromes over the next two seasons.
For now, perhaps the most telling question is simpler: if you were responsible for finding the fastest helmet for an Olympic pursuit team, why wouldn't you test one?
The ABUS TimeShifter is available from Velodrome.Shop for Individual Pursuit, Team Pursuit, Kilometre, Team Sprint and flying 200 use.
