It's been years....too many years my little lady with the 6 year olds feet suffered boots that were too big, too childish and too darn sloppy. Now she thought each time a new boot adorned her feet that they were the next best thing to hydrogen fuel cells.
However, as her skills improved, I'd watch and knew, her skills were outgrowing her boot capacity. It was time....time for "the fit"...the race boot fit. So, we searched and searched to find her a 260 sole length. We determined that a 250-255 soled length would be the optimum fit but then she'd most likely be skiing all the Jr race and performance skis. No, the 260 sole length was a good high performance all day fit. Next was to find a boot in the Jr. race category that had all the bells and whistles as well as performance as its senior siblings had. It was determined that Nordica Doberman and Tecnica Daiblo were the 2 best Jr. race boots we could identify. For Alice anatomically, the Tecnica was the best out of the box fit.
Her boots came in....and guess what fellow fashion minded readers...they were orange....man...too cool.
SO, I picked them up, get home before her, and clipped them in to her Stockli for the "on the mountain" look when she walked in the house.....you know ......first impression and all! Poured 2 glasses of wine and started the fit process. After shell fitting her she noticed how without the liner, the shell hugged her lower foot. Anatomically, big win here. With her footbed in the shell and her in her ski stance, we could see we needed to slightly adjust the cuff... no biggie. OK, put the liner back in and and she buckled in for her first time. She stood up and raised her hands to ski pole position, let her knees relax to find center, skeletal stacked and there it was.....she was so far over the front of the boots I thought she was an airborne Olympic ski jump athlete. Holy moly, she was over the toes and balls of her feet. Oh boy, so I played with the zeppa, using some spacers and finally concluded she needed to have the toe piece built up. While she braved her extreme forward stance, I place a 3/8 thick magazine under her toes and there it was...she was in the groove....A1 position. Well for that kind of work, it was off to the fitter.
Carl did a great job starting the fitting process from the beginning. Interesting, with past boots, it was very difficult to get her knees to track in the desired line and properly aligned over the front of the boot. The Tecnica got her tracking spot on. So for fit and tracking, gold stars all around. For stance....some building up of the toe. she'll be stacked correctly....well, you know what I mean.
Carl was also kind enough to look for any hot spots on her feet and where they matched up on the shell to perform some
"nip and tuck" grinding to maximize foot contact in the boot. I think I'm just as excited as she is to see those orange flaming Diablo's dancing on the mountain.
"To feel or not to feel that IS the question". I know after my first custom fitting and on snow experience in a high performance boot, I shouted to the first person I knew...." Wow, I can actually feel my entire foot moving the boot and ski".....just awesome!
I can only say that if you have not had this kind of epiphany in boot fitting....seek it out....it IS the holy grail to better skiing.
Happy feet to all,
Gary
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