The South Island's Ski Racing Specialists

Ski racing is getting more and more visible in the South Island with several exceptional u18 development squads like the Queenstown Alpine Ski Team (QAST) and the fact that our local mountains are the preferred off-season training slopes for ski racing teams from the Northern Hemisphere. Every year we play host to teams from Australia, France, Austria, China, Slovenia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Korea, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, USA, and other nations.  

Because of Outside Sports' world-wide reputation – especially as expert race bootfitters -members of most of those teams come to see us throughout the season at our stores in Wanaka and Queenstown. 

Outside Sports is fortunate to have Kazu Watanabe on the team at our Wanaka store as our lead race boot fitter. With almost 30 years' experience Kazu is the first choice for many international athletes when they’re in New Zealand. (He has also fitted boots for Freeride World Tour champions Ben Richards and Jess Hotter and other leading local freeride skiers – but that’s another story 😁) 

At our Queenstown store we have Tsukasa Anyojianother 30 year veteran of Outside Sports who works with the majority of the local QAST athletes, and visiting ski teams. 

Kazu and Tsukasa are backed by a team of expert boot fitters in Queenstown and Wanaka all of whom have extensive experience both here, and Japan, North America and Europe. 

Race boot fitting requires significantly more experience and technical understanding than fitting everyday all-mountain or free ride boots. Race boots have a different construction which helps give them precise control high-performance ski racers' demand. Usually known as ‘plug boots’ racing boots have a lower shell made of dense polyether polyurethane, which makes them very stiff and rigid. They also have a very narrow last – usually around 92-93 mm. Race boots come out of the box a bit like a blank canvas and are intended to have a significant amount of custom fitting work done to them by a skilled race boot fitter – in particular punching and grinding out the lower shell to match the contours of the racer’s foot, until they find the elusive balance between performance and comfort. Sometimes the boot sole might also need grinding or planing down to fit the bindings the skier is using. Because of this complexity, the race boot fitting process can take several hours, and a number of repeat visits, as the skier and boot fitter work together to get the fit perfectly dialed in.

At our stores in Queenstown and Wanaka we have a full range of ski boot fitting services. You can see the list of services and the price list here.

We have children's and adults race ski boots in store from Atomic, Fischer, Head, Lange, and Rossignol. 

Shop race ski boots 

We have race skis from Atomic (including kid’s FIS skis), Dynastar, Fischer, and Head.

Shop race skis 

We also have a full range of ski tuning gear and accessories at our Queenstown and Wanaka stores including wax, brushes, files, and stones.

We are New Zealand's specialist for POC helmets and body armour for ski racing.

Supporting our race ski retail department we have fully equipped ski workshops at both Wanaka and Queenstown where we can quickly and efficiently race tune large numbers of skis, making our workshops ideal for teams who need a fast overnight turnaround on precision tuning.