Time trials are a serious business. The race of truth, bike and rider optimisation taken to the next level. An exercise in suffering. All of the usual clichés. But, not always. Sometimes the teams who might not be at the pointy end of results and simply aiming to get round within the time cut on race day can have some fun, and for Team TotalEnergies that moment arrives on the shores of Lake Geneva.
For Stage 16 of the 2026 Tour de France, the 26.1km individual time trial from Évian-les-Bains to Thonon-les-Bains, the French squad's riders will roll down the start ramp in helmets that have little to do with marginal gains and everything to do with raising a smile. HJC, the team's long-standing helmet sponsor, has painted a run of its Adwatt 1.0 aero TT helmets in full Iron Man livery, courtesy of its partnership with Marvel, and for one day the peloton gets its own resident Avenger.
It is not the first time HJC has let the team's helmets stray from the strictly functional. Last year's Tour saw the brand turn out custom-painted lids for each rider, as it was still finding its feet as TotalEnergies' new identity, and this year's Marvel collaboration takes that one step further, using the Tour's biggest stage for something a little more playful. HJC's reasoning is lovingly simple: although bike racing is about numbers and margins and suffering, most people fell in love with cycling because, somewhere along the way, it made them smile. A time trial helmet painted like Tony Stark's suit clearly isn't any faster, but it is a reminder that the team behind the visor, from the development ranks up through the WorldTour roster, is made up of people with a love for the sport.
The choice of Marvel is not a random licensing tie-in either. HJC's cycling division is barely a decade old, but the parent company has been making helmets since 1971, and its reputation was forged almost entirely in motorcycling before it ever turned its attention to the WorldTour Peloton. HJC was the first helmet brand to title-sponsor a MotoGP round, at Brno in 2016, and its association with the grid runs deep: Jorge Lorenzo raced in HJC before his double world titles, Fabio Quartararo signed with the brand off the back of his 2021 championship, and Brad Binder currently lines up under the same badge on Sundays, racing for his Red Bull KTM Factory Racing team.
That MotoGP paddock is also where HJC has done plenty of its work with Marvel before, producing comic-book liveries for riders and fans well away from the bicycle world, so painting an Iron Man paint job on a time trial helmet is well within the brand's capabilities.
The helmet itself is no novelty act, though. It's been around for a while, first seen back in 2019, when Victor Campenaerts wore an early version of it to break the UCI Hour Record with 55.089km, and it has stayed in HJC's range as the brand's dedicated time trial shell ever since. Though not as wild as the latest lids from POC and Giro, it's more than capable, its design working well for a broad range of riders and positions, and in this livery it is sure to turn heads.
Whilst the prospect of the French team causing fireworks in the stage 16 time trial is unlikely, HJC's superhero paint job is a fittingly light-hearted note in the middle of a brutal fortnight, and a reminder that even at the sharp end of the sport, there is still room for a bit of fun.
