Why floating bindings offer the greatest control

By Matt Boxler

You wouldn’t buy a new car that didn’t come with wheels would you? Not that you could anyway because wheels are part of the design – part of the system.

Yet, for the past half-century, skiers have grown accustomed to buying skis and bindings separately -- leaving the shop with nothing but a sales slip and a return date to pick the package up once the guys in back have had time to fuse the two together.

That long tradition of selecting skis in one corner of the shop and bindings in another is changing. The systems approach is permeating the industry to the point that skis are designed not only with a specific binding in mind, but with a specific binding plate already built-in.

But why (you may ask) after a half century, is this happening? The answer is short.

“It’s a further evolution of shaped skis,” explains Hans Dyhrman, director of promotions for Elan in West Lebanon, N.H. “As skis got shorter it was important that we used the entire edge.”

Elan’s “Fusion,” Dyhrman says, is a truly integrated ski binding system because the binding plate is incorporated into the ski, not onto it. What fusing the binding plate to the ski does is help skiers use the entire edge, which wasn’t as critical when skis were longer because there was so much more edge to work with.

Once the binding plate and ski are joined, Elan uses an “intraglide” system to affix the actual binding to the plate. The binding’s toe and heel pieces are connected to the ski at one middle point via a Toolless Mounting Device (TMD). In addition to being incredibly easy to mount, this allows the binding to float naturally during the flex of the ski.

While floating bindings might sound a bit scary on the surface, Dyhrman assures us that it provides the best possible harmonization between ski and system flex, is more dynamic from edge to edge, is faster in turn execution and acceleration, and is more aggressive in edge grip in the tail.

“We need to be more effective with shorter skis,” Dyhrman says. “For people of all levels, getting a ski on edge and carving is not the easiest thing to do. Having this flex and power transfer underfoot allows people of lower abilities to carve a ski earlier … and really, right from the start.”

Elan started this evolution in bindings eight years ago when it developed the integrated plate technology. Today, this technology is the driving force industry-wide.