Review | The Bontrager Blaze is the first MTB helmet with WaveCel technology

Antony checks out the new WaveCel technology from Bontrager, as fitted into its Bontrager Blaze helmet. Recently, mountain biking has seen a big increase in the awareness of the long-term risks of concussion. The vast majority of mountain bike helmets use expanded polystyrene (EPS) to provide head protection, and the consensus seems to be that conventional EPS bike helmets are pretty good at stopping flesh wounds and fractured skulls (particularly at the low-ish average speeds that mountain biking crashes tend to occur at). But it’s becoming more apparent that even if there’s no visible damage to the outside of your head after a crash, it doesn’t mean your brain escaped unscathed. Your brain is essentially bobbing around inside your cranium like a goldfish in a very tight-fitting bowl, and sudden impacts can cause it to smack into the inside of your skull, or twist and tear its nerve fibres. This, as you can imagine, is bad news. The new wave of helmet technology?So helmet manufacturers are starting to come up with some innovative new technologies to enhance the protection that a standard mountain bike helmet can offer. These typically take the form of a separate liner to the helmet shell, which is designed to allow a slight amount of movement in a rotational impact, reducing the force transmitted to your brain. The most prevalent liner system out there at the moment is probably MIPS, which doesn’t make helmets itself, but licences its technology out to a number of manufacturers, including...

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