We talk with Bode Miller about his new company, Peak Skis and their new “Keyhole Technology”; why he thinks Peak could revolutionize ski manufacturing; his vision for Scarpa ski boots; his take on the Winter Olympics; and a whole lot more.
TOPICS & TIMES:
- Bode on the Winter Olympics (3:30)
- Peak Skis (10:07)
- Peak skis line up: 6 models (14:40)
- “Keyhole Technology” (18:23)
- Scarpa ski boots partnership (30:45)
- Crystal Ball: Peak Skis in 10 years? (39:25)
- Alpine-X (48:58)
- More on Peak Skis (59:51)
- What We’re Celebrating (1:05:44)
RELATED LINKS:
Am I a moron? Is there no video component to this?
Bode is bringing out a piece of paper and drawing, this would be so much better with video.
Lemme help:
https://peakskis.com/about/
These skis look wonderfully directional. Love it!
If you’ve ever seen Bode ski, especially in person, you would understand why it’s borderline-inconceivable that he would design anything but a strongly directional ski.
One of his hallmarks as a racer was his ability to very rapidly move pressure along the ski, even in tight SL gates. If you break his footage down frame-by-frame you will often see him seemingly deep into the backseat at the end of one turn, and then driving the living daylights out of the opposing shovel a (very small) fraction of a second later. That ability to extract maximum rebound from his skis while still maintaining clean initiation was one of the things that made him near-unbeatable when he was “on” (and not hung over).
So all of this is a long way of saying that I suspect that Bode wouldn’t be caught dead on anything that’s designed to be skied from a “centered” position. It’s antithetical to his approach to technique.
It’s nice to see that he’s modest as always (sarcasm). Bode is one of my skiing heroes, but he’s never afraid to explain why everybody else is wrong and he has the only answer…
Sorry, marketing is really nice…
Listening to Bode talk about flex and how the keyhole influences turn mechanics reminded me of a (very positive) Blister review a while back of a frontside carving ski that had fairly stiff longitudinal flex combined with relaxed torsional flex. Maybe a Head model just below the i.Speed/eSpeed?
I would add that Bode was sort of [in]famous as the “Hoji of racing”. During his heyday he was always driving his sponsors’ race rooms nuts with requests for unconventional designs based on his “Dremel experiments” etc.
Sorry to spam the comments, but my weird engineer-brain latched onto this whole “keyhole” idea and started subconsciously picking it apart. The short version is that it doesn’t appear that it would work as Bode says it does. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work at all, or that it isn’t great on snow, it just means that Bode’s explanation of how/why it works seems a little “off”.
The videos on Peak’s website show the “keyhole” as an oval shaped cutout from the center of the ski’s upper titanal sheet. The thing to be aware of is that while the entire sheet contributes equally to longitudinal stiffness, the sheet’s contribution to torsional flex comes mostly from the parts closest to the sidewalls. Look up “polar moment of inertia” for gory details. That’s why K2’s “Y-beam” design removes metal from the center of the sheet in the ski’s forebody (where they wanted a higher ratio of torsional to longitudinal stiffness) and from its edges in the tail (where they want a lower ratio). Volkl does similar things in some skis IIRC.
In other words, Bode’s keyhole would appear to “disrupt” longitudinal flex more than torsional. If I were a reviewer I would make a mental note to check thoroughly for a hinge point.
Again none of this is to say that it’s bad or doesn’t work on snow, just that it doesn’t appear to work quite as he said.
I would add that K2’s Y-beam is an (all-too-rare) example of a design feature that “checks out” perfectly from an engineering perspective. The underlying physics work exactly as K2 claims, and the design makes clear sense in terms of its stated skiing objectives (a longitudinally softer shovel that still “bites” well due to high torsional stiffness, and a longitudinally stiffer tail that releases easily due to lower torsional stiffness).
While it’s not one of my skis of choice, my hat is off to Jed and company. It’s a refreshing improvement over the industry’s typical “gimmick obsession”.
I remain somewhat skeptical about “keyhole tech” and I think the heads-up about potential hinge point is dead-on. That said, they probably ski very well, and would work great for some skiers.
I was more intrigued/surprised by what he said about boots.
His specific claim, as I understood it: if you bolted an alpine boot to the floor, and tried to flex it straight forward, it would be impossible. Instead, the boot would flex slightly outward at an angle. Or, another way to think about it, if the sole could move, when you flexed the boot forward, the sole would move down on the inside edge, as if you were engaging the inside edge of a ski. He said that this helped make old, straight, 1970s skis easier to turn, but that it becomes a liability with modern shaped skis, because they engage too quickly, leading to rapid balance movements, getting thrown into the backseat, and potential ACL injuries.
Now, there’s lots to unpack in there, but, supposing that what he claims is true, it could be the result of deformation of the ski boot, or it could be related to the geometry of the clog, cuff, and pivots. For example:
1-Place a boot on the floor in front of you.
2-Trace a centerline down the long axis of the boot.
3-Remove the cuff assembly and inspect the pivots.
4-If you placed a pencil or something straight through both pivot holes, or traced a line through both pivot points, would that line be perpendicular to the centerline of the boot? Would it be parallel to the floor?
5-The line through the pivot points could be oriented in such a way as to push the inside edge of the sole down when you flex the boot forward.
In any case, I suppose this would play a rather important part in boot fit, feel, and on-snow performance, especially considering all the attention paid to placing the foot just so in the boot, canting, and so forth.
Same here. I found his comments on boot design to be the most intriguing part of this podcast. Has there been any other research or discussion into this? If this is true, it seems clear the boot design may need to change to better match modern ski design
Agree with the boot comments completely. By far the best part of the interview, most likely because he was being vocally self critical about the stuff he has been working on.
The whole discussion for the skis was moot at best. It’s pretty hard to take Bode seriously with skis, as he’s made the same claim over the past ~5 or so years at three different, super premium, brands.
In short; his comments/deep dive on boots was great, for skis – he’s lost credibility until other parties say otherwise.
I tried my best to get a conversation going over on “un-named popular ski website” but nobody seemed interested. I wonder if it’s because it’s something very few people are aware of–if it’s even true! It does make me wan to to try a pair of the Raichle/Full Tilt/K2 boots, and/or the new Scarpa Quattro, just to see if I can feel a difference.
From Patrick Chase:
“In other words, Bode’s keyhole would appear to “disrupt” longitudinal flex more than torsional. If I were a reviewer I would make a mental note to check thoroughly for a hinge point.
Again none of this is to say that it’s bad or doesn’t work on snow, just that it doesn’t appear to work quite as he said.”
I read the deep dive about keyhole technology on the Peak website, they describe it almost exactly as Patrick does above, they even use the phrase “subtle inflection point”. I would say Bode described how it felt very well, but not actually how it effected the ski and its flex behavior. From the website, the forebody becomes softer longitudinally, (and I would add torsionally), but from the keyhole back, it stays stiff in both flexes. Stockli does something very similar with their “turtle shell construction”, which is cut S grooves in their top tetanal sheet, tip an tail. I own a laser AX with this construction. Its tip and tail are softer longitudinally, but they stiffen up when putting the ski on edge and flexing it. To me, it feels a lot like what is described on the Peak website. I am still on the fence deciding if I like it or not. It is different than most skis.