How Materials, Design and Technology Influence The Feel Of Your Favourite Pair of Skis

I've always been curious about what goes into making a pair of skis. What goes into the design process, the materials used, why certain ones are there, how it's tested, all those sorts of questions. And so this week I got to sit down and chat with product manager from Fischer, Christian Haas, and he answered many of these questions for me. I think it's quite fascinating that humans can feel the difference between different skis because of these different materials that are used and their different properties. as well as the blending and combination of these materials put together. Now we wanted to make the information in this podcast really applicable across the board, so you don't have to particularly like Fischer skis, any of the brands out there, you're going to find some valuable information that will help you in understanding what makes a certain ski behave the way it does, and so perhaps you might have some better idea about selecting that ski for your next ski choice. I really value these conversations with experts from across the industry. I've learned so much helpful information over the years, so I hope you have too. And if you have, you can help support the show by subscribing to the Big Picture Skiing YouTube channel or the Big Picture Skiing podcast on Spotify and Apple. This really helps support the show and bring on great guests like Christian that help impart really powerful knowledge to you. So thanks for subscribing to the channel.

Let's get started with today's episode. Christian, my hope is today you will help me and the listeners understand better what goes into our favorite pair of skis.

What we always have in, in, in the construction of a ski is that we're using in the center a core material. Either it's wood core for higher performance skis or good skis, or it's a PU foam for low-end performing beginner skis. All the material which we are using underneath this core, we have to use on top of this core as well. So means we have a glass fiber underneath the core, let's say wood core, we have to use a glass fiber on top of the wood core. If we use a metal inside the construction underneath the wood core, we also have to use it on top of the wood core. If we use, then we need a base material, it's a polyethylene base. We have to use on top a top sheet material, which normally is a polyamide or a nylon material or an ABS TPU compound material. Then we have the steel edges and sometimes we have a tip protector or other metal sides inside the ski. And to bend such a metal, you need an additional layer of rubber, a thin rubber layer in the thickness of 0.1 millimeter is enough.

Paper. It's so thin. Paper thin.

It's really thin. Could be 0.1, 0.2. And this helps to make the bonding a little bit, a little bit elastic. And this helps extremely when you bend the ski. So during skiing, bumps coming up, or do you jump in the halfpipe, the ski expands a lot, and without this elastic part with this rubber inside, the, the, the ski would delaminate. And this elastic part helps that all the material stays together.

Okay. Yes, I was, I was wondering about that because I was just thinking in my head, if I stuck some materials together— wood, metal, fiberglass— and then I bent it I could just imagine the thing shattering as I really bent it. So the rubber is a piece in there, really thin, but its job is so you can bend the ski.

Exactly.

Yeah, okay, so then tell us, um, I know that there are— maybe there's— I only know of two types of bases in a ski. Is there— is that— is that it? Is there just two types? And what is the difference? And what do people feel when they ski on these two types of bases?

The two types of bases are, on one hand, is an extruded material, which comes the name from that, uh, how you produce it, uh, and the other, uh, is a sintered material. And the main difference of the material is the molecular weight of it. So these are the molecules, how many molecules are in this plastic material, in this polyethylene material. And an extruded base will be mainly used for, for example, kids' skis or beginner skis, because on that skis it's not so important that they're super fast, super gliding fast. It's more important that it's easy to service it, that they need not that much service. And on the other side, the sintered base is the better material for performance ski, for high-performance ski or racing skis. And the more the ski comes to a racing product, the higher is the modular weight of this material. So really, World Cup racing skis have a top-end material here, which is also more expensive. And on a commercial ski, a regular sintered medium molecule lightweight sintered base ski is enough, and it's, it's a good quality, which are much faster in the speed than— or not, it's faster in the speed as an extruded base.

Yeah, okay, okay. Yeah, right.

With this special grinding, you, you have also tools to make it faster. For example, when the wet— when the snow conditions are super wet, then the, the grinding, the, the stone finish grinding, for example, could be more rough, and then you're again faster in the speed. If the snow conditions are dry or dry snow, then the, the structure should be a little bit smoother, uh, not so deep, not so rough, and then you are also with this faster.

Okay, okay, okay. So bases. So, so then we go into— I, I was going to ask about wood. Yeah, in the core. Can you tell me why different types of wood are used? Like, what properties are, uh, you know, I've— I mentioned before, one of my favorite skis from Fischer is the CT, the RC4 CT. Ski, like tell me why wood is used, a particular wood is used in that, and maybe it's different to my new Ranger 84 ski.

On the high performance or on the commercial racing ski like the RC4 CT, we are using a hardwood inside as a core material. This hardwood, what we are using is a peach some other, uh, constructions or supply, uh, manufacturers using an ash as a hardwood. Both are from the properties nearly the same, or almost the same. So these are heavier in weight, the ski is more stable. So we use it because of the need, uh, for our satchel ski. When we have, for example, a freeride ski, the Ranger, for example, here is the need not that it's super stable, it should be a little bit softer, a little bit playful, the ski, and therefore we decide to go with a softer wood as a material for the core. A softer wood is a poplar core, for example, So the density is much lower on such a core material and therefore it's lighter, a little bit easier to bend, and that's the choice here for freeride skiing. For mountaineering skiing, where the weight is much more important, we're using a lightweight wood core. Mainly it's used for mountaineering ski, Paulownia wood.

Okay.

And because the density is, is super low on such a material, but the stability is surprisingly good compared to the, to the low weight. So that's why Paulownia is mainly used for mountaineering skis.

Yeah, okay.

And then we have the chance to make combinations.

Yeah, I was going to ask, so are there any skis you can give me an example of, I might know, that have combinations?

Yeah, for example, on, uh, high-performance skis like the Curve skis, we are using combinations, so combinations out of poplar and some beech stringers on the, on the outer side, closer to the, to the steel edge, because then you have more stability on the edge and therefore more edge grip. So it's always a question of the needs. What we—

yeah, because I must say, I, so I've been skiing on that Fischer RC4 CT a lot and all my needs, because in Australia we often get melt-freeze cycles. So if you want to ski in the morning when the snow is groomed well, it is probably really hard because it was warm the day before. So I really like that ski. But then when I went to Canada, my friend Demelza, she lent me her, uh, Curve GT 76. It was exactly the same length, so they're both 175. And the radius written on it was pretty close, maybe 0.5 of a meter difference. But when I skied this Curve GT, I could— it just felt like it bent into the turn. It was far more effortless, less work. And it took a couple of runs, I was like, I'm just gonna steal this ski for this, uh, trip to Canada. It was— I had such a blast.

So Yeah, on this Curved GT 76, these so-called all-mountain skis, these are— the target for such ski is always to have an easygoing ski. Easygoing ski you get when you make the complete ski a little bit softer in the bending. So this, we call it bending line of the ski. So a bending line is when you put the skis on, on two bars. One bar is on the widest point in the, in, in the tip. One bar is the widest point on the tail, and you get a force in the center of the ski, and the force is always the same. It's round about 300 Newton, which are 30 kilograms, then you get a certain curve of, of the bending of the ski, and that's the bending line. And with a softer ski, you have a deeper bending line, and this makes it possible that you can make shorter turns. Uh, the RC4 CT, the, the Almost. The racing ski. So the commercial racing ski is, is much stiffer, and, and therefore it's not so easy to make short turns. But on the hard-packed areas, it's a machine. It's, it's super stable on the edge, and you always have a good edge grip.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, that's right. So then you know, a lot of the time skiers just have to really think about like a few things. One, the style of skiing they're going to do. Two, you know, the location and type of snow they get. And, um, so those two things sort of determine what, what sort of ski you're going to go for, or if you need a few skis like I— yeah, it's just nice having that choice because it's not always the same weather change.

Exactly. Yeah, I have in my garage minimum 5 pairs of skis, different. Okay, but I'm a lucky guy to work in this business.

Okay, so then if we stick to this, uh, this, this feeling that really attracted me to the CT and, and some other skis I've had in the past of this grip, you know, say you're, you're a skier, you're advancing, you're getting better, you're, you're taking more risks, you like going faster, you're comfortable you're skiing on some maybe harder snow and you want to carve, what exactly is it in the construction of these skis that makes it hold better?

It's two things. It's the better edge grip you get anyway with a stiffer ski where it's not so easy to bend. And we achieved this with an additional carbon layers inside the ski construction. We, we can reach it with an additional— with a metal layer, a titanal layer, for example, in the ski. And the other thing is that the, the bending line, the bending has to match with the torsional stability of the ski. If a ski is super soft, then the torsional must be different compared to a stiffer ski. And, and the relation, so, between the torsional stiffness and the bending guarantees the edge grip.

Okay, this makes it super complicated in the development and the R&D of the ski, because why can you make a ski that is quite bendy on the bending line, yeah, but has a lot of torsional stability.

What, what would, what would I feel if, if that happened, for example?

Would it, um, on, on, on, on, on a slalom racing ski, for example, on the real World Cup slalom racing ski, the the torsional stability is relatively high compared to a commercial racing ski, and the bending is softer than a Giant slalom ski, for example. But this is because they need more radius to ski shorter turns. And also here, it's always depending between the racer, a real World Cup racer brings more power to the ski, more force on the edge, and therefore the torsional stability and also the bending can be stiffer to commercial racing skis or high-performance skis. On a high-performance ski where a medium skier or a good skier, a sporty skier is using, there normally you can't get so much power on the edge on the product. Therefore, the ski can be a little bit softer, and also the torsional stability has to be a little bit softer. How we achieve it, the torsional stability in that way. With a— for high-performance ski or for, for racing skis, we're using an additional layer of carbon which is placed in 45° angle on the ski. Uh, or we can, uh, or— and we can play with an additional metal layer with a titanal which we can also, uh, placed there as a full metal on the ski, or we, we cut it in, in a special shape, which also helps to achieve different reactions on the product. So, okay, full material, for example, under the foot, because there you need the most stability, and getting a little bit more narrow on, on, on the, on the shovel to have a little bit more torsional flex there.

Okay, okay. So if I get it right, stiffer the ski is, that bending line, uh, flex, it, it will hold better. And the reason for that is because it doesn't vibrate as much, or is that, is that why the stiff— or, or does the stiff— the bending line stiffness also helps the torsional? They go together with making it torsionally stiffer, and that's why It's great.

Yeah, uh, the combination of it, it's, it's, it's not so easy to say this or this or yes or no, but in general, always the, the, the flex and the torsional stability, uh, has to match together. Uh, you said it right, vibrations is also a point which, uh where you, when you have too much vibrations on the ski, you lose the edge contact to the snow. And here, the, to the, the titanal, the metal, uh, especially helps to, to bring a, a smoother running on, on, on the edge, on the ski, that it runs smoother, less vibrations.

That's its main sort of purpose.

Yeah, that's exactly. And for real racing ski, it's, it's super important to get out these so-called bad vibrations from the ski.

Yeah. And I think you, you mentioned, we chatted before, how much difference, like how much more titanal metal would you put in a Giant slalom ski for the top World Cup racer versus, you know, my CT ski?

Like, what's the—

how much in millimeters?

A standard thickness of a titanal layer for commercial ski is 0.5 millimeters. For high-performance ski, we are using— it's also standard 0.8 or 0.7 millimeter. Thick layer of, of a titanal. On, on real racing skis, they using up to 1.2 millimeter, by far thicker. And could be that they using not only two metals, a sheet of metals, so one on top and one below the wood core, could be that they use also a third one to have, for example, on downhill skis where it's super important to have super stability on the, on the edge and on the whole ski. And each vibration you get on a downhill ski when you speed down with more than 130 kilometers can kill you.

Yes.

So therefore it's super important to have here a super stable ski and on some developments, uh, they're using an additional layer underneath the binding for, for example, because there you have the most pressure, uh, and also to have the strength against the pullout or, uh, of the screws of the binding.

Yeah. Okay. Yes, right. Okay, so different thicknesses of titanal metal get put in there. It helps very much with the vibration stability, which can help with with the Edge Grip. Christian, how do you know so much about all these different things? What is, what is your background? Because you, yeah, you know a lot about materials, you know about the different products. Yeah, what, where did it all start?

It starts, let me say, in, in a long time ago. So I'm, I have, uh, meanwhile almost 30 years experience in, in the ski industry. And, uh, before coming in the ski industry, my uni I studied in the university and engineers, so I'm an engineer and I started the first 10 years, I was working in the R&D of snowboard and freeride skis, freestyle skis. And since 13 years I'm with Fischer and here I'm the product manager. For the alpine skis bindings and therefore also responsible for the, for the whole product. So means from the idea, uh, what we need to, to the design, to the production of, of the product, uh, to the, to the right quality of the product.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. And that's behind you there is the next line of Fischer products that people can't get yet. This, this is like coming.

Okay, this is exactly— this is for the season '25/'26, which we are currently starting to producing the skis, samples and, uh, and, uh, inline, uh, models. And these, the whole lineup, plus the— on the second line we have also this special makeups which we're making for some key accounts and also for different countries.

Ah, cool. So you've got that lineup. I suppose it now brings up testing, and, and I was wondering, you make this ski, how do you decide, how does Fischer decide, and is an industry standard where the binding is placed on that ski?

The binding mounting point comes out of, of the long-time experience from, from the R&D, and it's, it's more or less a formula when they're calculating the shape and, and the profile. The profile means the thickness of the ski, so it's thicker in the under the foot and it's thinner in tip and tail, and it comes out of, of a formula of, of this development, and this is how we're going, uh on the first ski test on the slope with the calculated binding mounting point. And when we are not satisfied with the property of the ski, with the result, then we move the binding a little bit forward to see what's happened, or move it backwards to see what's happened. And sometimes we have to adjust this binding mounting point then for the production. For example, when we need it for beginner ski a little bit more easier in the turn initiation, then it could be that we move it a little bit, 1 centimeter to the front. If we think we need more edge grip on the tail and more stability in, in the running that it's running a little bit, uh, less nervous or smoother, then we move it 1 centimeter, for example, to the, to the back.

Yes, okay. And, and you're part of this testing team, aren't you? You, for, for certain style of skis anyway, you, you and, uh, some other people in the factory, you go out and test this?

Yeah, we are always 4 people normally for, for testing the skis, uh, Every guy has a different opinion, yeah, and we, we always take with us, uh, two new prototypes and, uh, at least one reference ski where we think it's the best, uh, by now, yeah, at the moment, or a competitor's ski, yeah, and, uh, and then we're switching the skis during the runs So everybody test one of these, all the 4 pairs of skis, and after these runs, so normally one run on the slope for each ski, then we discussing the outcome or the result of the testing, and then we decide how we going on, if we need an, another loop, new prototypes which are, for example, more stiffer on the tail or, or stiffer in general or softer. This, this we decide in, in, in this group of these 4 people.

Okay, now, yeah, there, I've heard in general across the brands in the industry Like some brands tend to, to be mounted a bit more forward, some brands center, some more back. Do you find— because I am, I'm pretty sure you would also test competitor skis and that sort of stuff— do you find there is a general thing? Like I've heard, like when I used to ski on Völkl, as I would— it took me a while, but someone said move them 1 centimeter forward, or the race ski is 1 plate hole forward. And straight away that ski felt to me— I skied it better. I felt like I was in the middle of the turn bending the ski in, in the middle of the ski. Do you find that there is this trend of different generalizations of positions, or, or not?

Um, I think, or we think, that there is not a typical trend there. That could be that on commercial racing skis, it's, it's, uh, everybody tried to make the skis a little bit more easier to in the turn initiation, but we wouldn't say that this comes only from the, the, the mounting point. Uh, our skis, you, you can compare the, the skis from the from the big brands, and they're sometimes, uh, the working on the same way, or they are all made for the same consumer group, and therefore the needs are more or less for every brand the same. And but it could be that one brand has a different philosophy. Yes, hard word for me. You got it. And then therefore they tend more to have the more stable running on the ski. And we think sometimes it's for beginner ski, it's easier when they have an easy turning initiation, which helps them more compared to a stable running ski. So because they are anyway not so fast.

Yes.

Okay.

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With other types of skis You sort of mentioned freeride skis like the Ranger, big, you know, powder all-mountain skis. The flex properties change, and so how you use the materials change. What about in terrain park skis? Because they're sort of again used a little bit differently. Is there anything you guys do there that's, uh, that's different from others with your terrain park skis?

Uh, on, on real park skis, we are entering this segment we did a relaunch on, on this segment with our Nightsticks, uh, 2 years ago. And we come up with some, uh, with a construction which makes us different from the others. And this construction has an additional layer of titanal in the ski construction, but not on top of the wood core. We, we do it only in the binding area underneath the wood core, close to the base. And the reason therefore is when the, the, the rider's jumping on a rail, and this is the, the most impact you can get on a ski, uh, is that it's— there's the danger to break it. Yeah. And with this additional layer which is very close to the point of the impact, you can give the ski more stability. And that's why we have there an additional TI reinforcement, uh, how we call it. But we are working in general a lot with different usages of, of the titanal in the skis. For example, on the freeride skis, we, we, we have a titanal layer which we call Shape Ti, and this is also different from the ski to ski. We have wider skis We're using, uh, titanal mainly under the binding area because there we need a super stability. But on, on the shovel, on, on the area in front of the binding and behind the binding, uh, behind the binding, we need a playful ski, and therefore we make it on wide ski only in, in the length of the binding area.

Yeah.

When we have narrow, uh, skis, uh, like 90mm waisted skis or 96mm skis, we extend the Titanal on the edge side. So on the other side, it's— then it looks like a fork.

Yeah, Ranger 96 is there and I can see it. It's sort of from the binding up to the tip, it's close to half, bit over halfway, that's kind of standing up at it. But yeah, it sort of, it has this fork, it doesn't, yeah, it's not, not the same shape as the ski. It's almost, yeah, exactly, on the ski it would look, yeah, like a strange shape.

And we make it this shape especially to the needs to, for such a ski, because the, the, the, the freeride skis which are between 90 and, and 96mm, they are more skied on hard-packed snows and therefore you need more stability on the edge. And that's why the titanal is there longer and it's close to the edge.

Yeah.

And the other models in between.

Yeah, I could really feel that. I skied that ski in Canada, the Ranger 96 in spring, so going through that melt-freeze cycle. In the morning there was hard snow, and in the shade it was harder snow. And that ski carved— that was the first time I had some wide open runs to ski it, not in powder, but it— but, and it was very impressive. I actually liked the feel. It felt very, uh, easy to make a nice long carve turn, very smooth, didn't kick me, kick me too much. Um, but then I— this season in Australia, I, I skied a little bit on this new Ranger 84. Yeah, that has no metal, correct?

That exactly. The Ranger 84 is— we think it's more a beginner freeride ski, super commercial, and therefore this ski has no titanal because it should be— it will be used mainly on, uh, on piste and as an all-mountain ski. But the, the, the, the, the user, the target group will not be so much powerful skiers than on commercial racing skis or high-performance skis. And that's why this is the model which we have without TITANAL. But the general idea of this shape TITANAL on the Rangers between 90 and 160mm waisted is that the wider the ski, the shorter is the titanal, the more playful is the ski.

Yes.

The more narrow the ski, the longer gets the titanal, the more stable is the ski, and therefore more precise the skiing on the edge.

Yes. Okay, so then is there a, is there a ski you've found over the years testing that has been your favorite? So, you know, from— you— the design was there all on paper, the ski got built, and then you finally got to ski the ski and test it, and you went, wow, that, that is a really good ski. Does there one— is there one that sticks out?

Uh, there was one, uh, which sticks out, or this one. This is the Ranger 102. So this is— and the original Ranger 102, which, uh, was 4 years ago, the pink one. This was especially in the, in the R&D, in the development. This was the first prototype which comes out of the mold, was such a good ski where we all were impressed, uh, how this ski works.

Yeah, I've heard that's got a— it has a cult following. Like, I know some people, you know, they really prize these, these skis, like the Freeride World Tour people, the all wanted it. Is that right?

Yeah, exactly. This is, uh, this is a really good, cool ski. And, uh, on the current model, the, the target was— because this was a little bit special in this, uh, type, and it was a ski what we think, or for us, was, was super great. But we find out that also for the for the main target group, it's not always that the right choice, what I think is, is good. So, and therefore we, we made it a little bit more playful and with, with a little bit less rebound, and, uh, and this makes it more easy to ski the, the current Ranger.

Okay, but the original was Are you, are you changing, are you bringing back the, the original one at any point? Because it loved it.

We, we think that it's, uh, on the time to, to go back in, in such an, uh, ski with, with such a rebound, but we, we make it in a new construction. So we work on that, we start to work on that now, but this will come back in 27, 28. Okay, so we start now in the year 24 to make the developments for 27, 28.

And in general, did that ski have more titanal?

Did—

like, how on, on a piece of paper with the, the, you know, like, is that the main difference?

It's the titanal and it's the carbon layer inside. Especially the carbon layer is, is, is, is, is some material which helps to improve or increase the rebound of a ski. Okay, so this is the force when you bend the ski and it returns back. It returns back. This is the rebound. And, uh, with carbon can help to increase that. But carbon is always a material which is from the environmental, uh, point, not, uh, the best.

So, okay, okay. Yeah, I was gonna ask, like, because it's, it's a— I mean, it's amazing material, obviously used high-end, all sorts of sports stuff, boats, cars, bikes, that sort of stuff.

Exactly.

It has amazing, amazing properties. But some of the reasons you're saying is, yeah, you're, you're also aware of environmental impacts Exactly, yeah. This seems to be a theme with, with Fischer. I know, yeah, there are some steps that you're taking in, in lots of different depart— like products in the company to try and reduce the impact.

Is that right?

Yeah, we try to, to reduce this impact, this carbon footprint impact. And with, uh, when we find a construction and we work hard on it to reduce the use of carbon or bring it totally out of a ski. And on freeride ski, it's possible to get it out of the ski. And this we see on the current Rangers. They're made without carbon and it's performing very, very, very well. And therefore we always try to reduce the environmental impact on all our new developments. Okay, this is important though.

That was one thing I was, I was wondering, is there a product, a material for example, that is not yet invented that you wish was invented? Do you wish there was like the environmentally friendly carbon, or is there like— would that be one? Would that probably be the top wish list? You as a, you know, producing this sort of stuff, like what's, what's missing? Like what's going to be next in technology in skis that makes a difference?

Carbon is a good point, to use recycled carbon. This is also what we are working currently on.

Okay.

But a general trend is to make, and this is especially on commercial race skis or high-performance skis, to get out these vibrations out of the skis. And when you have a ski with less vibrations, you have more contact on the snow.

Yes.

And because of less chattering of, of the ski and with more contact to this, to the snow, you can do earlier the turn release, you can make smaller turns and therefore fast accelerations and faster in speeding anyway. So we already developed such a technology for our real racing skis, and this will come for 25-26 season also in our commercial race skis in the RC4 line. And this is called— this technology is called Noise Technology.

Okay.

Because the idea comes from the musical industries on violins or guitars. They're using a special structure of wood inside and additional structure to reduce the vibrations to get this clear noise, this clear sound. That's why noise technology. Okay. And another example, and how we use it or how we make it, is that we bring a certain structure or of a weight on the, on the ski. We have a calculation for this structure and we print it underneath the top sheet foil. The top sheet foil is printed with the design and underneath we print, and this we do by a screen print, a color with metal, metal parts inside. So, and this color, this print has just a weight of 5 grams, for example, on the whole ski. This is not much weight, but this small weight can reduce the vibrations.

Have you got about a percentage you've sort of found it reduces it by?

Yeah, it's, you can feel it, yeah, the difference. And for example, To have a better understanding, when you driving your car and you have vibrations in the cars, sometimes these are coming from the wheels, or mostly so on the wheels, so on the tire. How you can avoid these vibrations? You get in the garage and they put a small weight, a few grams, on special places, and then the vibration going out of the cars, of the whole system. And this is exactly the way how we do it on the ski. We, we place a certain weight, a small weight, a few grams on a certain place with a structure which we print on it, on, on the inside of the ski. And this helps to reduce the vibrations and make the running more smoother. So because when you use, you also can reduce the vibrations with a layer of rubber in the ski, but that's heavy. Yes, first of all, it's heavy, and the second part is you still have the vibration in the system, but you, you try to break it with an additional material, but you don't get it out of the system. And this, uh dampening, reducing the speed, the possibility to be, uh, fast with the ski.

So, okay, there's a point, like, if you dampen it a lot, you get no feeling in the ski and just it's dead.

It's sort of— you're losing the rebound. Uh, exactly.

And it's trying to find this balance, take some vibration out to get a smoother ride but not take it out, so you still get this rebound and liveliness in the ski. And exactly, yeah, 5 grams, that's insane. Who, who comes up with this? Have you got like, who in the company, like, how did they— because, you know, this must be a thing, you have to innovate, you have to find new technologies, and you found this from, from music, from, from instruments.

When you want to be good in, in, in, in the, in the, in the job, you have to, to live it. First of all, you have to be a skier. You have to be in the market. You have to ski in different places of the world, and then you have to be interested in, in other things and looking how they solve problems.

Yeah.

And, uh, what, for example, what, uh, skyscrapers, they need stability against earthquakes. That they do not break and fall down and crack down. So what they are doing, they, they do the placing also on the high, on a high point where they have the most vibrations, an additional weight, for example. And this weight helps to reducing these vibrations.

Okay.

For example, the, the Taipei 101 in Taiwan, they have a metal ball of 6 tons on strings on the 90th floor, for example. And when this earthquake comes and the skyscraper bends, then it always be a little bit contrary. Yes, I can. And stabilize the whole system.

Yeah, wow.

This is also a way to reduce the vibration. The vibrations.

Yeah, fascinating, fascinating. Is there any other technology coming? Maybe even, uh, maybe you can even speak to anything in Fischer, just because I'm kind of— this is a fascinating topic. Any other areas you're looking to innovate in?

Uh, We, we always go through the world, or try to go through the world, with open eyes. And, uh, in general, uh, reducing vibrations is, is, is a trend in the industry which we're also following and try to bring down to also products on lower price points. On, and also on for performance skis, not only racing skis, high-performance skis. And therefore, to be open-minded for everything is always very, very helpful. And we working a lot with vibration reducing and with this Shape Ti at the moment. To achieve these special needs for the different target groups, for the different models. And, uh, yeah, that, that, that's the main thing, right?

Yeah. The other thing that's maybe a little bit unique, I just remembered, was the different radiuses. Because in a, in a race ski, FIS says you must have this radius or you cannot race that ski. It has to have standards. But skis for you and I to go and rip around and have fun, you can play with that. Maybe finally you want to speak to this triple radius, because I don't quite understand why you would bother. Why don't you just have, you know, this 15-meter radius in the whole ski? The racers do it, why don't we have it?

Okay, yes, you're absolutely right. On FIS skis, this As a rule, slalom ski has to be this radius of 30 meters, and from the tip to the tail. On our commercial skis, we have the chance to— or high performance skis— to make working with a different shape, and we use— we, we call it the triple radius. And with the triple radius is that we have on in the shovel, a shorter radius for an easier, faster turn initiation. Then we have a bigger radius underneath the binding area, and a bigger radius there guarantees more edge grip because you have more stability in this area. And on the tail, we have again a shorter radius which helps to accelerate out of the turn, speed up, and because that makes fun doing skiing. Yeah, yeah. And that's the, the triple radius. Then we developed it in a way where to make it more radical, that the, the turn initiation is more radical.

Yeah.

Uh, so mainly the, the, the first part of the radius is the main difference, and Then we developed for all-mountain ski, for wider skis between 76 and 85mm. They are not always skied on hard-packed areas. Sometimes they want to get it easier to ski. Sometimes they want to drift in the turns before they start with the edge grip. And therefore we make it the other way round. With the radiuses. We have bigger radius in the shovel and medium radius, uh, under the foot, and again a bigger radius in the tail. So this is then the easygoing E-triple radius, right?

Okay, yeah, okay, yeah, that makes sense, that makes sense. Do you know what, it's, it's really interesting that you mentioned even just the, the the grip underfoot in that— quite still a turny ski, the curved skis are quite turny, but having it straighter under the foot, it is really noticeable. Because I know when I ski a GS ski making short turns, like the Austrian-style short turns on a GS ski, yeah, this just grips better than my slalom skis, which are just as narrow underfoot. But because there's more shape in the FIS slalom ski, they just don't— like, there is this subtle difference in how you're saying just the stability, because I guess it's trying to turn and then there's more chance it twists off the air. So yeah, that's quite, uh, interesting. And this in the, in the, um, the curve.

Yeah. And sometimes for, for the top curve models, we're using an additional carbon layer. We call it carbon bridge, and this is only carbon in across the ski, so means in 90 degrees position. And this is in addition— not diagonal, it's only across, and it's only in the binding area. And we have on the top model out of carbon, this is the carbon bridge. On, on the mid-price, it's some fiber bridge, it's a glass fiber. Yeah, this helps again in addition to have more grip on, on the binding area.

Okay, yeah, which is the point. You really feel it, you know, you want to slide out. Yeah, okay, fascinating, fascinating. Christian, uh, thank you so much for your time and expertise on everything here. I, I certainly have a better idea of the materials and the properties of the materials, why companies use them in, in different sort of ways. And then a little bit of insight too into some of the different technologies and things that Fisher does. So I really appreciate your time sharing all this knowledge. And if people are interested, they can, they can, if they're watching on YouTube, they can leave a comment below about something, ask a question. We can, we can check back and hopefully answer that. And yeah, anything else you wanted to add and say to people listening?

Hopefully we get a tons of snow for the upcoming winter, that we all have fun on, on, on, on the products we developed, where we put our force, our power inside there. And, uh, hopefully we will all have fun with that.

Yes, yeah, I too. Yes, the lots of snow, really wish for that. Fantastic. Thanks again for your time, Christian, and, uh, we'll catch up later.