My favorite story about how Head engineers went about optimizing Graphene – carbon in its most elemental form, a matrix of the hexagonal atom a mere one atom thick, or deep, or wide or however you want to measure something so infinitesimal – in their Supershape series of carving skis. Having already made a collection of women’s skis from scratch using the new material, the Head R&D team knew they could use Graphene to tinker with flex distribution with minimal effect on mass distribution. The logical thing to do, particularly as skis like the i.Rally weren’t famous for being light, was to trim down the core and thin out the metal laminates to make a more accessible carver for the masses.
So what did Head do? Just the opposite: it thickened the i.Rally’s top and bottom sheets of Titanal and widened them all the way to the edge, then built up the core profile for good measure. I remind you that the i.Rally Head enhanced was already the de facto standard setter in the genre, not some weak reed in dire need of a power boost. Like all the Supershapes, the i.Rally already had piezos in its tail section that when vibrated produce an electric pulse used to power a microchip which in turn tells the ski’s tail feathers to stiffen up. Point being, the i.Rally was a wickedly powerful machine before its most recent upgrades; the 19/20 edition generates enough power to illuminate the Vegas Strip.
When a ski becomes as specialized as the i.Rally, it’s natural to wonder just how good it can be out of its element. The 59mm width difference between the shovel and the midriff means that although the tip will try to float in fresh snow, the tiny waist is heading straight for the bottom. Getting it to resurface between turns is as easy as boating a sturgeon. The i.Rally fares better after most of the powder has been poached, as no single pile of snow can sustain a direct hit by it and survive.
However ill-adapted the i.Rally may be for fresh powder, it more than makes up for it with its riveting performance on hard snow. It’s hard to imagine how you could be more connected to every centimeter of every arc that spools of its edge. “It’s more versatile than the i.Magnum with about the same horsepower, and more versatile, terrain-wise, than I expected,” reads the report from Start Haus’ Jim Schaffner. “I was worried a 177cm might not support my 235 pounds and legs of steel, however the edge never broke loose, felt pretty damn solid and gave back [at the end of the turn].”
Fortunately for most of us, one doesn’t have to be as big, strong and technically sound as Schaffner to enjoy the i.Rally. Once you add a little speed to its engine, all a mere mortal has to do is a suggest a turn and it starts to roll on an edge that won’t quit until you run out of hill.
