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Leatt Lab Tour with Georg & Lukas
31st March 2023, South Africa, Cape Town: After a tremendous effort, defending champions Georg Egger and Lukas Baum of Orbea Leatt Speed Company Racing slipped out of the race lead due to an unlucky mechanical. In case you missed it, a stray piece of wire destroyed Lukas’ derailleur on the penultimate stage, costing the team over 10 minutes and relegating them to second in the final general classification. 
“We ride at the front, dictate the pace and capitalize on opportunities that arise when the bunch is on the edge.” – said Georg. It is this pacey, aggressive and exciting style of racing that has earned the German duo much adoration and support from the fans of the ‘world’s most televised’ mountain bike race. 
Amongst those fans are the team’s new partner, Leatt, whose head office and test Lab are based in Cape Town, South Africa. The Leatt Lab is a state-of-the-art facility headed by the founder of the brand, Dr. Chris Leatt.
Inside the Lab are custom-built test rigs - that don’t exist elsewhere – and are designed to help the team at Leatt better understand accident dynamics. The ultimate goal of the Leatt Lab is to innovate, research and develop new gear to improve levels of protection for an array of riding disciplines. “To innovate we actually had to develop our own tests and sometimes the tests themselves were more difficult to develop than the actual product.” - says Dr. Chris Leatt
Lining the shelves of the Leatt Lab are hundreds of prototype units that have been through various test processes through the years. Competitor products are also tested for comparison purposes. Also inside the Leatt Lab is a workshop with welding, painting and production capabilities to manufacture prototypes for testing.
Lukas Baum recounts a crash from 2022 and how it shifted his awareness on helmet safety for endurance riders: “I face planted last year and got knocked out for the first time. Before that I never really questioned the safety standards of helmets. In Endurance riding we basically have no protection other than the helmet – so that helmet should provide significant safety.”
At Leatt, product development is an ongoing process and there are a lot of talented people working tirelessly behind the scenes to help improve rider safety. The feedback from Lukas and Georg, two of the world’s best endurance riders, adds real-world experience and valuable input to that process.
Learn more here: leatt.com