The Technology Centre was officially opened in the "General-Konrad-Kaserne" in the Upper Bavarian town of Bad Reichenhall on 22 October 2004. The cooperation between WINTERSTEIGER and the DSV, however, has existed much longer: there has now been a loyal partnership between the two for some 15 years. Cooperation between the DSV and WINTERSTEIGER began with the Micro NC. Since Autumn of this year, the DSV team has been working with the new Race NC and it is extremely enthusiastic. "The focus at the DSV is on high-quality reproducibility. And WINTERSTEIGER's new Race NC definitely meets this requirement," says Enrico Heisig, who is responsible for work and the finishes project at the Technology Centre. Fritz Hollweck, head of the DSV ski pool adds, "So it has been possible to continue the long-standing cooperation with WINTERSTEIGER dating back to 1996 as successfully as before." According to DSV grinders Kurt Jostl and Jens Lautner, the main option of also being able to store all the settings that a colleague has carried out on the machine on a USB stick and of being able to access them as required is a huge advantage in terms of practical application. It is now possible for any number of users to work on one machine. The finishes of the new Race NC will have their first official baptism of fire in the upcoming World Cup.

True Precision Work: The Grinding Professionals on the Job

Two men essentially ensure the right finish at the DSV Technology Centre: Kurt Jostl who is responsible for ski jumping, combination and biathlon, and Jens Lautner who takes care of cross-country. Every ski that is prepared in Bad Reichenhall is measured first of all using a special measuring process. The grinders carry out this process using a device that physically determines the ski parameters. The device is a prototype and was designed especially for the DSV in 2003. The skis are selected using the athlete's body weight as a starting point and are then pressed onto the machine with half the athlete's weight. This gives the technician a force curve that indicates where on the ski the maximum pressure is located. Based on these results, a decision is then made as to which ski is ideal for which discipline, which conditions and which athlete. The measuring process is also particularly important for enabling a comparison of different brands of skis among each other. The ski is individually ground after measurement.

The GFM checking system - a device for surface measurement - is used in a third and final step. The quality of each individual finish is checked on this machine after the grinding process. This step is particularly important since the bases differ in hardness and the quality of the bases also varies. These individual differences are recorded on the machine in order to make the finishes comparable and in this way to filter out the optimum finishes. DSV grinder Jens Lautner explains, "The difficulty when grinding is above all that of finding the best possible baseline as there are so many unknowns. This is why testing work on snow is the most crucial and important part of the whole process."

Close Alliance: Technician and Athlete

Close collaboration between athlete and tuning technician is essential for a good result. Both technician and athlete decide jointly before a race which grinding program will be used and also make the vital selection regarding material. Every athlete basically has on average 15 to 20 pairs of skis per discipline and in cross-country this may even be 25 to 30 pairs. The technician then preselects between five and seven pairs of skis from this allocation. Shortly before the race, the technician and athlete make a final joint decision and choose the actual skis from the two best pairs that will be used for the race. The technician can still react to possible changes in the weather up to two hours before the competition but it is not possible to make any further technical changes after this deadline from a preparation point of view. Generally speaking, each technician takes care of between three and four athletes.

The DSV Technology Centre certainly cannot complain about lack of work: more than 1,500 pairs of cross-country and jumping skis are ground each year. 1,000 of these actually run as test or competition skis, around 500 are trial finishes.

It goes without saying that these finishes also have to be tested. Tests are usually conducted all year round with the main test phase being in winter. When testing, the most important thing is to be able to test at those locations where a World Cup is actually being held. The cross-country tests take place in the DKB ski hall in Oberdorf and on the glacier; the ski jumping tests in the Jever ski hall in Neuss. In spring, tests are carried out until around the middle of June depending on the snow conditions and the amount of time available in each individual case.

Top Marks for WINTERSTEIGER

The technicians agree on the extent to which the athletes' success is related to WINTERSTEIGER's finishes: WINTERSTEIGER's finishes are an important building block in the German Ski Federation's achievements. The Technology Centre's aim is to supply the athletes with exclusive and first-rate work. This is what tips the scales and gives the DSV athletes the advantage they need over the competition when it really counts. So that this carries on a meeting is held, each year between the DSV and WINTERSTEIGER at the end of the season to discuss what went well in the previous season and where optimization may still be needed. The intensive exchange between the two partners leads to regular enhancements - even during the development of the Race NC, WINTERSTEIGER incorporated the DSV's requests and ideas into the machine. This means that the knowledge gained from racing is integrated in the series products to constantly improve the quality of the finish.

Enrico Heisig emphasizes the importance of accessories for trouble-free production and says, "We get all our accessories such as grinding stones or diamonds exclusively through WINTERSTEIGER because the quality is simply spot-on." WINTERSTEIGER's cost-intensive development work, carried out on grinding stones and diamonds, ensures that maximum quality is always used. And the DSV's successes are recurring proof that the quality is perfect.