When the Wind Tunnel Agrees With the App
A Real-World AiRO Story from New Zealand
Every so often, a customer story lands that does more for credibility than any spec sheet or feature list ever could. This is one of those stories.
In a recent episode on Fitter Radio Triathlon Podcast, host Jack sat down to recap a session he and his co-host had with Justin Ralph of Velo Performance in Hamilton, New Zealand — one of the fitters who uses AiRO to guide aerodynamic and positional decisions for his athletes. The full conversation is worth a listen: watch it here.
A rainy Friday, a laptop, and ten minutes of pedaling
The session itself was refreshingly low-friction. Jack changed into kit, had a few reference photos taken to capture his real riding position (not an idealized "aero tuck" he'd never actually hold on the road), and spent about ten minutes just pedaling comfortably on the trainer. From there, everything moved to the laptop.
That's the part worth pausing on. No wind tunnel booking, no six-figure lab, no all-day session — just a rider, a fitter, a bike, and a platform that turned a handful of photos and a calibrated setup into a working aero model. Justin and Jack were then able to manipulate the model directly: shifting position up, down, forward, and back, and watching the impact in real time.
The helmet library: small market, big unlock
The moment that really lit things up, according to the episode, was AiRO's helmet library. For fitters working in smaller markets like New Zealand, getting hands-on access to the newest helmets is genuinely hard — and expensive. Premium helmets can run over a thousand dollars each, which makes it impractical for most fitters or riders to stock a shelf of options just to test them.
AiRO's growing library sidesteps that problem entirely. And because the underlying models improve with more scanning data, the library isn't static — it's expanding month over month, giving fitters access to gear they'd otherwise never get to evaluate for a client.
The part that matters most: it matched the velodrome
Here's the detail that should matter most to anyone evaluating AiRO's accuracy claims. Jack had prior real-world aero data on two helmets from actual velodrome testing sessions. When he and Justin ran those same helmets through AiRO, the app produced a wattage difference between the two helmets that closely mirrored what had already been measured on the track.
Justin, by his own admission on the episode, was initially skeptical of the result — until they pulled up the old velodrome reports and confirmed the numbers lined up. That skepticism-to-validation arc is exactly the kind of moment that builds trust with fitters who are used to relying on physical testing as the gold standard.
The story went further: a helmet that had tested surprisingly well for Jack in the velodrome, but had underperformed for most other riders Justin had since tested in real life, showed that same rider-specific pattern when run through AiRO. In other words, the app didn't just get the average right — it appeared to pick up on something specific to Jack's position and physiology that matched what real-world testing had already shown.
Why it's worth paying attention to
What makes this story stick is that nobody involved was trying to prove anything — Justin was testing the platform out of curiosity, brought his own skepticism into it, and only came around once he pulled up his own historical data and saw it lined up. That's a harder kind of validation to manufacture than a curated case study.
If you're a fitter deciding whether a photo-based aero model can actually hold up against physical testing, this is a fair example to weigh. And if you're a rider curious what a session like this even looks like, the short version is: no wind tunnel booking required, no all-day session — just your bike, your position, and about ten minutes on the trainer.
Full episode: The AiRO App – Jack's Experiences
