Torbjorn Ragg and Rottefella's
New Telemark Norm (NTN) Binding-- Part Four
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February 8, 2006--
In part four of our interview with Rottefella's Marketing Manager
Torbjorn Ragg, we wrap up with a few final questions and finish
by getting a foot into an NTN boot and the boot into the binding
to see how it flexes.
Key points include:
- When asked about all the secrecy surrounding
NTN development and why Rottefella had been so reluctant to publicly
discuss its progress, Torbjorn indicated that once officials
at his company realized their NTN binding partners were going
to jump ship, Rottefella came to believe that a lot of the industry
had lost faith in their ability to pull the NTN off and deliver
a workable binding. "For us it was very important to try
to prove to everybody that we could actually do this.. a lot
of people were saying that 'these guys are never going to get
it right,' so we said to ourselves that we'll prove that we can
do it. Either we will succeed or we will go down with the the
flag flying to the top, that was sort of the term we said back
home. But we will put the money and the effort in there necessary
to see this happen. When we made that strategic decision a couple
of years ago we just put the lid on everything that was going
on with product development, we closed the family of product
testers, and we just worked very persistently on the NTN to see
it happen."
- This prototype shown in the interview
is, according to Torbjorn, very close to being "production-ready."
It is to be the first in a series of new bindings from Rottefella
that will fit to the NTN standard. "And hopefully there
will be other binding competitors of ours producing bindings
that will fit to the standard," said Torbjorn.
- The weight of the NTN prototype shown
is comparable to Rottefella's Cobra R-8, but according to Torbjorn
Rottefella's engineers hope to make it even lighter through the
use of high strength to weight materials such as magnesium.
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Of course all of this doesn't mean a thing
if the new "second-heel" system does not offer some
real ease of use and performance improvements over the current
75mm norm. Here in the final portion of our video interview we
see a one-take, unedited, super "easy-in" entry into
the binding. I had gone though this process one time previously,
the day before actually, and it was as easy the first time as
you see here in the video.
Also clearly visible in the video is this
NTN "second-heel" binding's outstanding boot flex.
From the moment the heel begins to be raised the soft-ish bellows
begins to collapse and the boot flexes naturally at the ball
of the foot, this with virtually no weight on the back foot at
all.
Author's note: Not
much to say here at this point. The video illustrates the execution
of the second-heel concept quite well. What remains to be seen
is how this NTN binding and boot combo performs on the snow....
that is, after all, the true bottom line.
Next:
Some final thoughts and commentary
on the NTN, this prototype binding, and what lies ahead. |