"As big a breakthrough as the heart rate monitor, maybe even bigger"; Has Visma struck gold with this ingenious innovation?

According to Tymewear, the VitalPro sensor provides the most accurate insights into performance outside of a lab test. A VO2 max test is an indispensable tool for every team to see how an athlete is doing, but performance in a race always differs from performance on the rollers in a lab. Visma | Lease a Bike needed something else to measure 'real' effort, and the sensors provide new insights into a rider's physical and mental suffering in a race.

The Dutch team is therefore delighted that the UCI has approved the gadget. Its influence could change the peloton. "Measuring ventilation in the field, in the most accurate way possible, teaches us a lot about how the body deals with exertion in competition," said Mathieu Heijboer, Head of Performance at Visma | Lease a Bike, to Velo. "These are efforts that cannot be replicated in training or a lab. It will optimize our training and improve our race strategies."

Tymewear and the Dutch team have been working together for some time, and the sensors were already used in races. However, the UCI indicated they had to be approved first, so the meters were put back in their boxes. Now that they have been approved, they can be used again. "A reliable, accurate ventilation sensor could be as big a breakthrough as the first heart rate monitor was in the 70s,” says Tymewear CEO Arnar Larusson. “It could even be bigger."

Heijboer indicates that Visma | Lease a Bike will already be using the sensors in the Tour de France. "We’ll definitely also use Tymewear in competition, but purely for data collection and learning. There’s still a lot to learn in this area,” explains the Dutchman. “We’ll probably use it in the Tour de France this year too, but with no different objective as with other competition. It will just be for data and learning."