Ski Racing - November 21, 2011

room off the retail race shop. It’s hard to imagine running hundreds of pairs of skis through this smaller tuner in an expedient fashion. But they did.

“We could do whatever we want-
ed in here,” says Chase in the old
tuning room. Now, however, they can do whatever they want a
lot faster. “We did a couple of skis last week in three minutes and
five seconds. Now you still have hand work to do before, because
you’ve got to take the sidewalls down; you’ve got to put the three-
degree side-edge bevel on there, but then the machine takes over,
cleans every thing up, flattens every thing, does the side edges,
base bevel. And, you know, you still have to touch them up at the
end and you still have to wax them, so there’s still a lot more to do,
but it’s a lot better than running each pass, maybe six times with the
guy walking around the machine each time.”
This facility has gotten the attention of the Eastern racing commu-
nity.

“Up until now it was kind of hang on and hope for the best,” says
Head rep Boomer Mumford, “and now the kids can come in and get
serviced and taken care of, and they’re not just from here but all
the way from Burke to Concord, Mass. That’s how Head set their
whole thing up; we have six race stocking dealers throughout New
England and this is the hub.”
Joe Dunn of Tecnica-Blizzard says the level of service is good for
the entire region. “Oh man, this is fantastic,” he says. “The ability to
get that quality World Cup stone-grind at every level is just a huge
advantage to this region and all the athletes.”
The current store design, according to store manager Peter Car-
bonneau, simply evolved according to need. “Initially there was one
pod here,” he says. “One became three and then we kept adding
on. Essentially the building makes a big circle. As time goes on and
we added satellite stores, and there are six of them now, there was
an added need for storage and we all know how that works. That,
coupled with the fact Sport Thoma has so embraced the race side
of the business, has made for a lot of expansion to the point of hav-
ing a dedicated room just for race, as well as a dedicated service
area.”
Eric Larson says he was doing race prep in his Franconia, N.H.,
garage when he was recruited by Sport Thoma. “It’s been nonstop
race business since September first,” he says. “We’re jammin’.”
Among the services the shop offers is that of tech rep — a club or
individual can hire a tech for a day or race event. Sport Thoma even
offers rental speed gear, hand-selecting the fastest skis in their de-
cidedly large quiver. Since Larson is considered the guru, he’s often
the one who goes off and leaves a ball of fire named Steve Founds
at the helm of the race department.
Founds, a former freestyle skier, explains that each customer is
assigned a number and each setting on the new machine has an-
other number. Asked if he has a “math head,” he laughs and says,
“I tutored half of my trig class in high school.”
The Wintersteiger, says Founds, is a game-changer. “On race day
we are waxing, scraping and buffing like madmen,” he says. “That’s
still the most labor-intensive part. But with this thing, I’m willing to
bet come race day it’s going to knock our time into a quarter of what
it use to be.”
Founds says he’s the guy who is on hand to “kick the tires, light
the fires, talk the talk and all that stuff,” when Larson isn’t around.
He adds the relationship he shares with Larson is something really
special. “We finish each others thoughts,” he says. “It’s like being
with your brother. We’ve worked together eight or nine years. You
can fight and then hug at the end of the day.”