Much about the Monster line from Head is contrarian in nature: they want to engage early (the tips aren’t tapered), the tail holds onto a carve (they’re only rounded enough to avoid hang-ups), they use absurdly light materials but don’t obsess about overall weight, and every ski is built the same and priced the same despite wider skis having higher material costs.
Every Monster could also give a hoot about what’s it’s flying into. The Monster 88 would make a good ski for a Marvel™ Avenger: it’s not afraid of conflict. Aim it at snow with the consistency of fluff or foie gras; it could care less.
For 2017, Head has incorporated the miracle material Graphene™ – carbon reduced to the irreducible one atom – into the i.SL RD’s make-up. One might be forgiven for thinking that adding Graphene would ipso facto reduce the ski’s weight, but racers aren’t looking for lighter skis, but ones with perfect flex distribution. Because of its absurd 300-to-1 strength advantage over steel, Graphene strengthens the ski as well as stiffens it, an important feature among fragile slalom race skis.
The Supershape i.Speed takes all of the considerable talents of its predecessor up a notch or two. The new sidecut is even more shapely that the already Betty Boop silhouette of the i.Supershape Speed it replaces in the line, so tight corners are even more of a kick. It bows more easily because it has a thinner core profile, particularly underfoot where its Graphene™ reinforcement is concentrated. Once tipped and pressured into its very tidy 14m arc, its grip is World Cup quality, intensified by two end-to-end slabs of Titanal.
