by Tim Falconer ([email protected])

The perfect skate? In theory, it would be a bony blade growing right out of the sole of your foot. After all, a skate's job is to take the instructions from the foot -- "I want to push off"or "I want to turn left" -- and send them through the boot, blade support and blade to the ice surface with maximum speed and precision and mimimum waste of human energy. In fact, thanks to many design advances in the last 15 years, today's high-end skates are ingeniously constructed to tighten up this communications line.

For instance, consider the Bauer Supreme 3000, a model popular with NHLers. Compared to a low-end model such as the Bauer Charger, the 3000 contains several design features (see below) that promote efficient "energy transfer" from your foot to the ice. (The experts describe the performance of a skate in terms of how closely the "energy in" from your foot matches the "energy out" or "energy return" from your blade.) "If you played in a pair of Chargers, and you tried to make a sharp turn, your foot would go in one direction and the skate in another,"says Rene Bourque, director of R & D for Canstar Sports Group Inc, manufacturer of the Bauer line. "It might be only a millisecond difference, but it would take more effort to correct."

Canstar researchers can't quantitatively measure energy transfer or energy loss. But they can get a good sense of the relative performance of skates made of various substances and designs. Using high-speed video, they record a skater doing the same turn, say, with two different pairs of skates, one with a soft boot, one quite rigid. By sticking locator dots on various parts of the boot and blade, they can closely track just how a skate moves in relation to the body and the ice.

With such experiments they are learning progressively more about such issues as just what compromise between suppleness and stiffness in a skate boot offers a skater the optimum balance of support and comfort. (A boot made of canvas, for instance, would be highly comfortable but too loose fitting to repond to the foot's movements; a boot made of steel would be highly responsive but entirely uncomfortable). And from learning about how much of a skater's acceleration originates from the hip and the knees, they've concluded that an optimum boot design of the Bauer Supreme 3000 makes the inside of the foot rest two to two-and-a-half degrees higher than the outside.

As much as skates have improved already, Bourque says the next generation will be lighter, will perform better and offer more protection. "You'll see improvements in everything from head to toe. Energy in and energy out will be even closer to equal. That's what we're trying to achieve."
 

THE COMPONENTS OF THE SKATE:
 

 

The ankle  The toe  Blade support  The blade runner  The blade radius  Blade runner bottoms

From "How Hockey Works" (Equinox, January/February,1994).
Copyright 1994 by Tim Falconer ([email protected]). Not to be republished or retransmitted for profit without the consent of the author. All Rights Reserved.