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Bont Semi-Race skates

by Andrew Smith

 

The first impression upon opening the box and seeing the skates is "shiny" the second is how simply they are packed. No instructions in the box, just the skates and a skate tool secured in bubble wrap. Looking them over you can tell the money was spent on the skates not the packaging, nice hyper stripe wheels and abec 7 bearings round out the package.

Putting them on for the first time was interesting as I had to pretty much de lace them to get my foot in. Once in and the laces done up, they were surprisingly comfortable, no pinches anywhere. Being my first real skate in any sort of a speed skates, the much lower cuff was a concern, but the way the skate grips your foot and the snugness of the boot around your ankle does give you a surprising amount of support. Though the top of the cuff can dig in a little if you allow your ankle to pronate to any degree. The first time you stand up in them it does feel rather strange, its not the extra height of the 100mm wheels, its the length of the frame, you look down and can see nearly a whole wheel out in front and behind your foot. My first thought after starting to skate was how on earth do I turn, after the easy way the Sebas turn the amount of effort I had to use was surprising though quickly adjusted to. It did make me feel like a beginner again, but maybe no bad thing.

After an hour or so getting steadily more used to them I had the confidence to do the Wednesday night skate. Maybe foolish, but the skates did give me that level of confidence. At the end of the night, I didn't want to stop, even though this was my first real skate in them, I had no discomfort and apart from pronating a little on my left foot there were no real problems.

These skates include Bonts supermold technology so more out of interest that requirement I stripped the skates down to the boots and stuck them in the oven for 25 minutes at 85c, when they came out it was an incredible difference. The boots went from being rigid to rather flexible. After quickly putting the frames back on, I put them on, pushing in the heel area to make it a little tighter so there fit is even better now. It takes 20 minutes for them to cool and harden again, this can be repeated as often as you want to get the fit you want.

 

Managed a couple more street skates on them before I was off for a week of skating in Switzerland. Just to be safe I packed my Sebas as well as the Semi-Race. Apart from a couple of days when it was wet I used the Semi-Race constantly and each time my confidence and enjoyment increased.

They have shown I need to work on my technique but they are so easy to skate on you almost forget you are on 100mm wheels, the give-away is the extra speed along with the extra effort needed to turn.

For anyone who is interested in trying out speed skates, I can't recommend these highly enough.

 

Note: There is also a heelbrake available for this skate.

Links

Bont Skates - the manufacturers

Bont online forum - lots of useful speedskating related posts on here.

 

 

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