Equipment Update: What We Saw In Davos

Davos is a special FIS World Cup stage because that’s the place where bosses and key personnel of the top equipment producing companies choose to congregate at, year after year.

We will have a separate little story telling you who’s been around this year, but it’s fair to assume that the captains of the industry are not just coming to breath that fresh Swiss mountain air – but to watch their latest gear being employed to win and to talk to athletes they sponsor.

That’s not to say that Davos has become the place to launch your latest & bestest, alas. We openly hope the day will come.

But even the last week there were a few debuts or just relative rarities we saw – and will share with you.

We showed you last week the Beta-version of X-IUM Carbon Premium. Well, here you have a chance to see for the first time what “uncamouflaged” version of the Rossignol’s newest boots looks like – on Federico Pellegrino’s feet
More and more athletes started to appear in the newest S/LAB Skate boots
Erik Valnes is the newest signee of Kinetixx, rapidly expanding German gloves-making company
Sandra Schützová and her Kästle RX10. Strictly speaking, Sandra run on Kästle already last season, but the Austrian company under Czech ownership has gone big on advertising and marketing its skis since then
We do have a good reason to believe that quite a few of these skis are actually newest models – but foiled as the current shop models for marketing purposes. When they go on sale, they will get a different paint scheme
Sara Pellegrini defies “established order” by using SkiTrab planks and Start poles – we believe she’s the only one in the World Cup
Spine boots started to appear on coaches’ feet. Looks like the Russian bootmaker settled on taking a long but steady road to the World Cup podium
Personalisation trend is all the rage in the ” sneakers’ world” – and looks like it’s making its way into relatively insular xcskiing – even if individualisation is done by hand
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