We are psyched about the upcoming racing season…

Throughout the year we train our bodies to cover a race course as quickly as possible, and skis are what we count on to carry us from start to finish.

As our program has developed, we have created a system of ski management.  We have 20 athletes, each with a fleet of skis designed to accommodate all the variable conditions we encounter.

We employ a wax tech/fleet manager year round to help each of our athletes continually develop, maintain and test their fleets. During the summer months we are fortunate to be able to test skis at the Thomas Training Center on Eagle Glacier.   In the fall, we ski at Hatcher Pass on early season snow, where we refine our fleets before the race season.

During the  season we take advantage of each race venue and their unique conditions to test wax, grinds, structure and all of our skis.  Last year we had 47 testing days while on the road.  We tested 5 different complete lines of kick wax, 5 different lines of glide wax, 50 grinds and over 300 pairs of skis.  We tested the effects of different binding placements, different ways to mark kick zones, and different ways to make hairies.

Using the data we have gathered, we have been able to fine tune our system.  Each athlete now has a fleet of skis that consists of 10-15 pairs of skis all picked for different conditions.  All of our bindings are mounted based on each skis characteristics, and every pair of classic skis has kick zones based on weight, body proportions.

Last year we found Swix waxes to consistently be amongst the fastest waxes we tested.  For that reason, we will be racing on Swix exclusively this year.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 15th, 2009 at 4:28 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.