Race ski design is constantly evolving based on testing and feedback at the highest levels of competition. We’re all accustomed to seeing a cosmetic change every couple of years, and of course we’re all aware when a new model comes out because of the accompanying marketing. But many of the changes that constantly occur within the cosmetic cycle are relatively minor but meaningful adjustments to the camber profile or even to the material configuration of the skis. Keeping up with this evolutionary process is important, so that we know what to expect from new things when they come along.
The best way to get an early look at new ideas is to go to where the newest stuff is being testing. The World Cup is where most new ideas get their first practical race testing (after more or less extensive in-house testing by factory racing departments). We work with a number of different World Cup athletes, and stay involved with service at major championship events in order to be up to speed on these adjustments. Actually, we do the work because we enjoy it, and staying up to speed is a convenient side benefit.
In addition to winter trips where we’re involved with race service, we make off-season visits to the ski factories to keep in contact with the process that brings next year’s skis to production. We’re able to visit these factories because of our relationships with the racing departments. These very valuable relationships are based on service work and ski selection for top level athletes like Kris, Noah, Tad, Sophie, Ida and others. It’s probably good to add Caitlin Gregg to that list since Amy picked her bronze medal skis! To protect these relationships we’re obliged to be somewhat circumspect about what we share and how we share it. Each company has pretty clear guidelines and boundaries about what we can share. For obvious reasons they prefer to handle their own marketing and brand image management! For that reason, we’re not in a position to be specific about the evolutionary changes we see. But we can pass along our enthusiasm for the skis that get produced, and provide some context about the process.
Last month Amy and I spent a couple of weeks in Europe, visiting ski factories, and fitting in a bit of vacation around the edges of what was supposed to be a “work” trip. This was also our first big opportunity to follow-up on some of what we saw in Falun, and to get a look at the 2015 production and the skis we’ll be selling next year. This spring visit is a big one for us, because prior to this trip we’re more or less operating blind; we haven’t seen the new production and we don’t really know how it’s all going to work out for next year. We just pretty much hope and assume that everything will be good, and the production will be up to snuff. Well, I’m happy to report that everything is good, and the production is, in many categories, the best I’ve ever seen.
Influences for Change
To understand where change is coming from, you have to identify where change is occurring. In cross country skiing, the focal point for evolution is currently long-distance racing and the ski-classics circuit. The long distance circuit (and really most specifically the classic-style marathon circuit) has seen a big surge in popularity in recent years, and that popularity is accompanied by a surge of investment. There are more and more pro marathon teams with corporate sponsors modeled after pro cycling teams rather than the national team model used on the World Cup. These sponsors are eager to entice the big stars from the World Cup as well. For next year we expect to see names like Northug and Olson focus at least as much on marathon racing as on World Cup. In the meantime, the level of performance and specialization in marathon racing has really skyrocketed – particularly among the men where the sport is now defined almost entirely by double-poling. The top women in marathon racing like Seraina Boner enjoy good success in World Cup and major championship competition, while World Cup skiers can cross-over successfully into long distance competition. Recent winners of the Vasaloppet include Vibeke Skofterud and Justyna Kowalczyk. But among the men, the level of specialization has reached a point where the top marathoners go without wax in most races, and pretty much exclusively train double-poling. The level among long distance racers is extremely high – and World Cup skiers can’t plan to switch over a dominate the distance scene.
The focus on double-poling has resulted in a small but growing demand for double-pole specific skis. Last season we saw two World Cup distance classic races, in Davos and Toblach, where a handful of the men double-poled the entire race. In these cases the guys were using skate skis. But in the marathons the standard solution has been to use classic skis without kickwax. My guess about the difference is that the World Cup courses feature faster and more technical descents with the possibility for more aggressive use of “turning techniques”, and the skate gear provides the possibility to pick up more time on these sections of course. But it’s pretty well accepted that the fastest gliding speed comes from classic skis.
There have been some different schools of thought about what kind of classic skis make the best double-pole skis. At this point the question remains open, but consensus seems to be building toward overall very soft and low-camber skis. It’s interesting to note that back around 2005 and 2006 Chris Klebl contacted me about selecting special skis for sit-skiing. Chris is an adaptive skier who has gone on to a great deal of success, including a gold medal in Sochi. Over several years we explored different ideas, and the most successful direction in the widest range of conditions was to go with very soft 902 classic skis.
This past season we started to see some purpose-built marathon skis for the first time. But maybe more interestingly, we started to see some of the ideas and concepts driven from double-pole specific demands carried over into application in normal skis – both in skate and in classic. Falun world championships were notable from my point of view as a championship where new ideas and directions on the material side where getting put onto snow, and adopted very quickly. We saw some common direction between the new skis in Falun and the ideas emerging around double-pole specific skis.
Interestingly, the most direct application of these developments as they affect next year’s inventory and ski selection for us seems to show up on the skate side of things. When we came home from Norway after our post WM family visit to Madshus, we brought home a pair of prototype skate skis. We had seen the first production of these skis in Falun where they saw some measure of success, though by no means universal application. But the skis we brought home were from a second production, and they were a bit more universal, with longer pressure zones than the first production that we saw. Those prototypes impressed us consistently all spring, and won most of the testing that we put them into (you can read a summary of one of our tests here).
When we returned to Norway in May we found additional iterations and variations of the new design ideas. We had the opportunity for additional “testing” on the crust up in Sjusjoen, and were further impressed with the new skis. Madshus allows us to take materials from their racing department prototype production when it suits our needs, so we’ve selected some of these new skis for next year. Many of these are pre-sold based on customer demos on that one pair we brought home in the spring, but we’ll continue to work with these new ideas in on-snow demos and tests through the winter.
Madshus runs a tight feedback look in their development cycle, and it’s never a big surprise to see a high pace of development with a fast carry-over to production from those guys. Fischer is a bigger company, and while the process is very similar, we don’t necessarily expect to see new ideas make it to production very quickly. In the past several years Fischer has expended a huge amount of resource and energy on bringing the Speedmax technology into the production line. The introduction of digital press control, and the addition of the cold base bonding step in the manufacturing process have been the focal point in Fischer’s production. During this process I have sometimes felt that the connection between the development of racing product for the world cup and the production of skis for the racing market was getting stretched. In Falun we saw a pretty major adjustment to the Speedmax skate skis, and we were immediately impressed with the performance of the new material on the snow. The adjustment resulted in smoother transitions in the forebody running surface, and better strength and suspension in the bridge material. The performance result was a more active ski at full weight and overload with better initial acceleration under foot. While these adjustments directly addressed my only real complaints about the production Speedmax skis, I can’t say that I was optimistic about seeing them in production anytime too soon.
But I’m happy to say that it appears that these adjustments have been carried over to production with an in-line change in the camber settings over the course of the spring. The skate skis being produced now at Fischer represent the single most significant adjustment I’ve seen in years, and I’m more excited and optimistic about next year’s skate skis than I’ve been since the 2010 production (which remains something of a high-water mark in our experience).
We have a lot of work left to do selecting and preparing skis. While it’ll be six months before the new materials get tested in large numbers, I’m confident that we’re looking at the best skate skis we’ve seen in the past four or five years from both Madshus and Fischer. We will visit Salomon later in the summer, but have already had more interest and enthusiasm about the new carbon skis than we’ve seen since we started working with the brand. It’s looking like a good year.