Alpina Gets Prestigious Design Award For Elite 3.0

Alpina Gets Prestigious Design Award For Elite 3.0

Gear News, Newsfeed
The Alpine Elite 3.0 boots line just received arguably the world's highest appraisal in the field of industrial design: Red Dot Product Design Award. It's a big deal, the covered Red Dot is often seen gracing promo pictures of the winning models. To give you an idea: apart from Alpina 3.0s, the award this year also went to AirPods Pro and IPhone 11Pro to name but a few. To put it bluntly, the Red Dot is turning a product into a coveted symbol of its owner's ...coolness? taste? deep pockets ( it only goes to top-of-the-line products in range)? all of the above? Well you decide, but we are totally in support of that trend when you buy because you dearly want that thing, not just because you find it…
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Time For Summerski?

Time For Summerski?

Gear News, Newsfeed
With all the skiing world on lockdown, the question of How to commence preparations for the next season? will start growing on everyone's mind very,very soon. Summerski might have a shot at if not solving the problem, then at least buying time till top skiers could go back to their glaciers of choice, currently uniformly shut. We wrote about Summersk project here and here There is not much to add - except that the project might finally have a chance to go big. Now that we all learned that travelling is not a right but a form of luxury it would be a good time to think of Plan B.
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Gear News: Unusual Brands At Juniors World In Oberwiesenthal

Gear News: Unusual Brands At Juniors World In Oberwiesenthal

Gear News, Newsfeed
Apologies for starting with the obvious: most of the top athletes compete & win at the Juniors/ U23 World Championships using exactly the same brands as their older comrades in the FIS World Cup. In professional sport best prospects are signed early in hope of seeing them win the Olympics and the World Cups one day. That's something only large companies with serious sponsorship budgets could afford. Not every large company is willing to invest in many junior, however and not every gear manufacturer is willing to sponsor grown-up world-class athletes with their ,well, fairly grown-up appetites. That essentially means the Juniors at Oberwiesenthal are, among other things, are anextremely unusual face-off: The equipment produced by second-tier manufacturers (basically, those who can't afford Klaebo or Bolshunov) is put against larger,…
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Gear Update: What New We Spotted At Ski Tour 2020

Gear Update: What New We Spotted At Ski Tour 2020

Gear News, Newsfeed
There wasn't a huge amount of premiers at Ski Tour 2020 when it comes to gear, yet some notable debuts were spotted: [caption id="attachment_14890" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Anamarija Lampic " podium walks" the newest One Way Diamond SLG20 poles [/caption] [caption id="attachment_14887" align="alignnone" width="1920"] At 50g/m SLG20 are incredibly light. One Way is only supplying its sponsored athletes with the new poles. Start of sales: fall 2020[/caption] [caption id="attachment_14885" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Swix is lagging a tad behind its Fischer-owned rival: Triac Aero 4.0s only appeared as non-foiled " Release Candidate" version...[/caption] [caption id="attachment_14886" align="alignnone" width="1920"] ..what's important is who had them: Alex Bolshunov is not exactly known for heaping praises on gear yet he says that Aero 4.0s feel really good. [/caption] [caption id="attachment_14884" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Rossignol S series hitherto camouflaged…
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Fischer’s Dominance In Distance Racing Evident? Or Is It Being Challenged?

Fischer’s Dominance In Distance Racing Evident? Or Is It Being Challenged?

Gear News, Newsfeed
Is glass half full or half empty? Start lists of today's pursuit races at Ski Tour 2020. Of note: the left column, who-is-who in female distance racing, continues to be totally dominated by Fischer = 6 out of 10 with all top 5 places occupied by Fischer's athletes. The right column, however is markedly different: "only " 4 out of 10 with all podium places in yesterday's men 15k F race taken by rival skis.
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