After choosing a ski, the base pattern is perhaps the single most important factor in the competitiveness of a top skier’s fleet. Patterning and related technology are secrets cherished by the maintenance teams, as they solve championships.
Did you think so?that lubrication decides the skiing winner? Wrong.
Top skiing is an instrumental sport where the most important thing is a functional whole. However, after choosing a ski, perhaps the most significant single factor is not the lubrication but the grinding and patterning of the sole.
Patterning, however, is quite a mystery. It is very difficult to figure out exactly how the soles of the skis of top skiers are patterned. Details will not be disclosed to outsiders.
For example, in the Finnish national team, responsible for grinding Hannu Hovila was not excited to present to HS a device for running patterns on the skis of national team skiers.
The reason was that the device has been adapted to the needs of the national team. It has been tuned in, which could be revealed in the pictures.
“Pictures are always viewed,” Hovila justified.
However, there is one top professional in ski sanding who agrees to shed light on the veil of secrecy.
“There it is. ZKRMC. “
The cryptic-sounding font gets Kimmo Vilenin get excited. He browses the files of an Italian ski sander and flashes one of his beloved and longest-used sanding patterns on the screen.
The letter “Z” refers to Vilen’s partner Giacomo Zaupaan and the “K” to him himself. The letters “RM” belong to a long-term customer. C comes from the word “Cold”.
This is a grinding pattern for cold and dry weather, with Ristomatti Hakola skied his first World Championship gold in 2012.
“Since then, the pattern has skied several World Championship medals in different countries. It was developed in 2010 or 2011 before the Finnish Championships in Imatra, where Ristomatti won. He was the youngest 50-kilometer champion in the world at the time, ”says Vilen.
Vilen previously worked for Hakola and Anne Kyllösen as a ski guardian.
Today, he hone his skis in his company, which has four cross-country skiing teams as his customers. Names cannot be revealed.
“This is a bit of a formula job. I have a duty of confidentiality. ”
Skiing in addition to the extremely tuned athletes, the value races are a battlefield for maintenance forces.
Iivo Niskanen may be in any good condition, but the championship will not be won without a properly selected, lubricated and patterned ski.
In recent years, the proportion of sanding and patterning the ski base in particular has become more prominent. That’s no surprise.
The machines used in patterning are constantly evolving and offer tremendous opportunities for new small inventions.
Simplified, the purpose of sanding and patterning is to remove moisture between the bottom of the ski and the snow, as the water layer between the two flat surfaces creates a suction effect.
The wetter the weather, the greater the benefit of grinding as long as the ski is chosen correctly.
There are limitless variations. Different grindings work in different humidity, temperature and snow conditions. There is also moisture in the frozen snow.
Vilen has more than 30 years of experience in ski sanding. As a 16-year-old junior skier, he started skiing. He was in front of a grinder for the first time in 1989.
“At first I took care of my own race skis and soon others. It took time. ”
Soon Vilen was a ski salesman, guardian and entrepreneur.
Kimmo Vilen prepares the grindstone for use.
His company Suksihionta.fi maintains the equipment of skiers from amateurs to the sharpest top in the world. For an ordinary fitness and racing skier, a good basic grind costs 70–100 euros.
Vilen’s company has three grinders from the Italian Svecom. The Finnish cross-country team has two similar devices, one of which has been transported to the Beijing Olympic Ranges in Zhangjiakou in good time.
Vilen is familiar with the machines of the ski association, as his company is also responsible for the maintenance of Svecom’s machines in the Nordic countries.
Of course, he does not comment on the equipment of the Finnish national team. Obligation of confidentiality.
“Teams compete with each other, and everyone has something of their own,” Vilen concludes.
IN CROSS-COUNTRY SKIING the glide has been improved by treating the soles since the early 1980s.
The mechanical grinding comes from the alpine species, where the ski was first driven with a single pattern.
In the 1980s, industrially made hand-patterned irons, a kind of file that made straight grooves in the bottom, also appeared in cross-country skiing. Ski-minded metalworkers could develop career irons themselves.
Since those times, the patterning of skis has revolutionized quite a bit.
The grinding machine works in a simplified way so that the diamond grinds the desired pattern on the stone and the stone reproduces it on the bottom of the ski.
There are many variables.
Frosty pattern that is especially suitable for free skiing. The sanding pattern is round and the surface is denser than in the wet weather pattern. If the pattern were sharp, the snow crystal would easily adhere because the crystal of the frost gel is usually smaller and finer.
The curved conifer pattern or the so-called problem hook pattern is suitable for wet gluing. Four canals collect water and a curved conifer pattern guides it away from under the ski.
There are dozens of different types of diamond blades with which the pattern is engraved on the grindstone. Skilled grinding masters tune the blades even better themselves.
There are also different types of grinding stones. According to Vilen, the national teams have at least five different types of stones: wet weather, zero snow, artificial snow, normal frost and dry frost.
But at this point Vilenkin is silent. Stones and diamonds fall into a category that he does not reveal in detail either. And not all of them can be photographed.
“They are competitive factors.”
Race ski takes about 25 grinds. Usually the race is polished about five times a season, which means that it lasts for five years in race use.
The best pairs of top skiers only save for the most important places, such as the championships. Therefore, their life cycle can be paa lot longer.
The possibilities for making different patterns are practically limitless. The computer-controlled machine does what the user commands with the accuracy of a fraction of a millimeter.
Before sanding a new pattern, the old pattern must be removed. The bottom is run smooth with a so-called opening stone.
“This is an important step. The removal of the old pattern is done in small revolutions. When driven at high speeds, the bottom becomes clogged and does not absorb cream, ”says Vilen.
After that, the ski is actually patterned. First, the desired pattern is imitated with a diamond blade on the grindstone. It is then run on a rock to the bottom of the ski.
The depth of the pattern is only 0.08 to 0.3 millimeters.
Abrasive patterns can be applied to the bottom of the ski in up to three different layers to get the best air circulation in different conditions of snow, crystal and heat.
A different pattern can be run on the base and tip of the ski. Or the pattern may be deeper in the middle of the ski than on the edge. And so on.
“If, for example, when sanding dry snow, the bottom pattern is too large, the snow crystal will stick and the ski will not slip.”
The desired pattern is reproduced on the grindstone with a diamond blade.
Perhaps the biggest significance for the end result is the data bank collected by the master grinder and the know-how accumulated over the years. Vilen’s career covers almost the entire history of mechanical grinding in cross-country skiing.
Code ZKRMC is just one of hundreds of grinding models stored by Vilen. They are ready for different ski areas, skis and athletes.
“This is years of work,” he sums up.
“And you don’t learn this from books, but by testing and being on the track itself.”
Vilen’s company is also constantly developing new patterns.
“We’re deliberately doing extreme experiments to find new ideas.”
Data also has economic value. If you know how to use the machine, you can get a lot of information out of it.
“The value of our machine as a basic package is 250,000 euros, but with the collected patterns I could start selling for one million euros per machine. You have to lower the price for the work. ”
Today, there are programs that allow the pattern on the bottom to be modeled from photographs. But even the program is unable to interpret what kind of stones have been ground and what kind of diamonds have been used in it.
“They play a big role in the end result and are known to no one but the original author of the pattern.”
In addition, grinders are individuals. According to Vilen, his machines do not make exactly the same trace, even if they enter the same parameters.
Kimmo Vilen has been grinding skis mechanically for almost 30 years.
Medal tuning is a whole consisting of ski selection, grip and glide lubrication and grinding.
The most important thing is to find the right profile ski for the skier for each course and track, which the maintenance team can then work on for the race condition based on the feedback from the testers and the skier.
Vilen estimates that the importance of grinding as a whole may be greater than that of lubrication, as it has developed rapidly in recent years. The difference between an excellent and a conventional pattern can be so significant that it must not be reached by skiing.
“If something new is found, the difference can be 30 to 45 seconds on a 15-kilometer journey,” says Vilen.
He gives an example from the Lahti World Championships in 2017 from the finals of the men’s sprint trip.
As the skiers descended from the Indian hill via the J-bend to the Lahti ski stadium, the Norwegian trio came after the tip. But this time, the peso station was of no use.
According to Vilen, the Norwegians had misjudged the snow and polished the right pattern on the skis with the wrong stone.
“It will make a big difference in time, even on a short trip.”
Norway’s strong sprint trio remained in 3-5th place.
But since national team-level skiing is a mystery, we can’t be sure what happened in the end.
Italian won World Cup gold Federico Pellegrino was anyway In an interview with HS sure: “I had the fastest skis in the race!”
Kimmo Vilen checks a fresh ski.
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