Main image: The lightweight, intricate and surprisingly strong interior wooden framework of a handcrafted Otter hollowboard surfboard. (Otter Surfboards)
Whether golf is your game, boxing your knockout or tennis your one true love… the latest high-end sports kit can amplify your personal best performance to levels you never knew possible. If the product blurb is to be believed. Let’s take a peek into the blistering new arena of super-tech design and super-advanced materials. Who knows, perhaps it’ll soar your PB to supersonic.
Who wants ordinary? In the roiling hollow semi-hemispheres of barreling waves and tubes, you don’t just want to stand up – you want to stand out. Here’s a family company from England’s most westerly outpost, the fiercely independent county of Cornwall, which comes with full access to some really gnarly weather. They’ve been hand-crafting personalized wooden surfboards, paddleboards, bellyboards and handplanes since 2010. What’s special? This video explains. Everything made with locally grown timber from regenerative, sustainable woodlands. If their hands-on workshops are a tad geographically off-limits, you can always rely on the good old British Post Office to paddle your personalized parcel across the seas toward you.
Standup paddleboard and paddle in wood sourced from sustainable forests, crafted by Otter Surboards, Cornwall, UK. (Otter Surfboards)
Ever since in-home gyms and workout suites became the norm, focus has moved from athletics to aesthetics. Feel good? Yes, but do you look good while all a-sweat? Pent (we admire the naming strategy, full of power to come) makes luxury gym equipment for home gyms, hotels and yachts with high design and exquisite craftsmanship as vital as performance. A hand-crafted leather punching bag with associated gloves, both in the softest-touch leather, will leave only the merest scratch on your bank balance when you see the tag on a set of dumbbells with custom rack in American walnut or black ash. Then again, quality should never be argued with.
RAXA super-soft leather punchbag and gloves. (PENT.)
Quickest way to avoid a double fault is to single-mindedly insist on playing with a personally customized racket. Angell Tennis, serving out of Cambridge, England take technical construction to new levels. Carbon fibre? Yesterday’s fish ‘n’ chips. Their claim to responsive frames involves a sculpted throat and bridge (not an ENT procedure) and Hot Melt TX resin (not a howl from the waxing bed) that ups the aerodynamic flow of your all-round game. If you feel the science here is overwhelming the innocent joys of amateur sport, you can always take up padel tennis. Of course, the sainted people of Angell have that covered too. Anyone thought of customizing ear-plugs for people living around pickle courts?
Angell V5 Total Custom tennis racket. Similar available for squash and padel. (Angell)
The Swiss have a history of going downhill. Fast. Record-breakingly fast on skis when it comes to international competitive events. They have helpers in the technical department, such as the science faculties at the HSR University of Technology in Rapperswil, plus the Swiss Innovation Agency, Innosuisse. zai skis are handcrafted in Switzerland by a small team of skilled craftsmen, all passionate skiers. Appenzell ski manufacturers from Timbaer and zai’s daughter company Fainschliff, as well as the ex-World Cup rider Franco Cavegn, take zai innovations to the slopes. When you’re vectoring the ice at height, it helps when things go like clockwork.
Whatever the color of your run, zai skis come with Swiss innovation. (johannes/Unsplash)
If Purdey needs an introduction, best not darken doors. Founded in 1814 and still the apotheosis, if a Greek word might be permitted, of English gun and rifle makers. Royal Warrants are a given. As is the proclivity of customers to have their side-by-side and over-and-under shotguns tailor-made, with weight, rifling, action and other lethal details fashioned to order, like a suit from nearby Savile Row, only slightly less forgiving. Intricate engravings on the side plates and the stock oval are, we presume, within the domaine d’expertise of one’s own silversmiths. Forgive our French. And please do remember before you leave 58 South Audley St, W1 that you will be ordering a pair, so as not to embarrass the staff.
Lock, stock and barrel aristocracy: Purdey bespoke shotguns. (Purdey)
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