Johannes Klaebo Shows Rollerskis He Uses In Training – And He Co-Developped Them

02Jul 2019 by DS News Team

First of, we have to admit that we love when skiers present products bearing their names. Virtually any products. One can’t hide in the winter forest ignoring the current trends – and those are that great athletes cooperate with equipment manufactures or , indeed, launch their own brands. From Olivier Bernhard/On Running to Michael Jordan/Air Jordan by Nike ( just to name but a few big names) – that’s how the world rolls these days.

So, when a skier gives her/his name to a product – it’s already a win for great sport of skiing ( cue Daehlie, Ulvang and Johaug).

But if he actually participated in designing one, utilizing all that experience of long hours spent training and competing – that’s true gold. As in “Klaebo Gold Edition”

Full disclosure before you run to the nearest friendly store, selling IDT rollerskis: buying them won’t turn you into the Olympic & world champion, sadly. But when it comes to pleasure of owing something truly classy, something that’s been very well put together – you’d be the king. At least that’s what Johannes says.

Here are the quotes from our recent conversation with Johannes as he was showing the set he’s actually using this year.

..Rollerskis might appear to be a simple device – a metal bar with wheels. But in reality it takes a long time to find that golden combination of power, speed, reliability etc. etc
How many hours were spent fine-tuning them? Difficult to say, nobody was clocking it – but dozens of hours for sure , mostly on the roads around Trondheim
…Norwegian roads are not like an ideal dedicated rollerski track – they could be cracked, uneven in places. One of the key tasks working on Golds was to find that ideal distance between the skis’platform and the pavement: not too high and not too low…
…the wheels are made in the US – not in Europe as traditionally . One of the key goals in development was stability and predictability on a wet tarmac…
Another feature that is important for pro-skiers: training on the roads we often have to do sudden braking. And that best achieved with a T-Stop technique. Great braking – but wears regular wheels down quickly. The new ones are much better adopted for T-Stopping
…The number on this pair? No, it’s not a secret code – it’s some test model number and as you could see from the wear, they already were used quite extensively

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