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Here we are, back to work and feeling the letdown that always comes after a week of gulping down festive libations, clove-studded hams, and crazy Uncle Bill’s conspiracy theories. Come January, aside from skiing, it feels like there’s just not much to look forward to. But don’t shelve the champagne glasses to gather another year of dust just yet. Tecnica is giving us one more thing to celebrate: The release of one of the most exciting revamps in ski boot history, the all-new Mach1 LV, which will be available for consumers online and at select retailers as of Jan. 6.
The narrowest offering in Tecnica’s groundbreaking and award-winning Mach1 line (more on that later), the LV in all flexes has, until now, been polarizing. Taking “low volume” to the extreme, it has had a fit so precise that it only worked—albeit extremely well—for a very small niche of skiers, most of whom are women with naturally low-volume feet. But the new iteration promises to be far more accommodating, while retaining the same retention its fervent fans demand.
The update applies to both men’s and women’s versions, and it includes an instep that’s three millimeters higher and slightly more forward; a wider heel, ankle, and sixth-toe pocket; and a revamped T-Drive—the carbon-fiber cuff-to-shell connector on the rear of the boot—for a more consistent flex and easier entry/exit. The update involves all-new molds created with the help of 3-D scanning, which wasn’t available when the brand first designed the line.
“It’s a million-dollar-plus investment to totally overhaul a boot like that,” said Christian Avery, Blizzard Tecnica’s North American product manager. “Some brands will reuse pieces and parts, but when we do a project like this, everything is a new investment, top to bottom.”
According to Avery, the redesign has been a long time coming (the boot was last updated in 2019), as the LV across both genders had the most compromised fit of any Tecnica boot on the market. “It has the lowest instep of any boot in any category across all competitors, including race boots,” Avery said. And while the higher flexes of low-volume boots represent a small part of the market share, they are aspirational flagship models for the brand, which made a redesign all that much more important. “It was a double-whammy,” Avery said.
The new Mach1 LV will also boast the new T-Drive connector designed to enhance power transmission to the front of the boot when it’s flexed, and to have a consistent rebound. “The current one doesn’t do a good job of getting you back up when you flex,” Avery said. “The new one is so supple and smooth all the way through.”
From its inception in 2014, the Mach1 line has been one of the industry’s biggest disruptors because it was the first boot to offer consumers a more intuitive pathway to finding the right fit. It upended the age-old brand convention of building the highest performance boots into lasts with the narrowest fit, and vice versa.
Essentially, instead of pushing wide-footed experts into a boot that would immediately require a lot of boot work, or pushing narrow-footed intermediates into boots they would swim around in, Tecnica went with a volume-first approach: They built a high performance boot in each width, with each model exactly the same in terms of technology and price, and then offered lower flex options, too.
“Your skiing ability doesn’t have anything to do with the size of your foot,” Avery said. “If you’re a high-performance skier with a wide foot, there are not a lot of good answers for you out there. And it’s the same if you’re not a very strong skier with a narrow foot.”
The strategy makes perfect sense from a consumer perspective, but it’s expensive and labor-intensive for brands, Avery said, which is why more companies haven’t adopted it.
So, whether you have narrow feet or not, having more low-volume options is a good enough reason to pop that bottle of bubbly chilling in the fridge. Because “dry January” refers to the powder, right?
2025 Tecnica Mach1 LV Specifications
The redesigned 2025 Tecnica Mach1 LV (available now) features a slightly higher instep and improved T-Drive tech on the spine of the boot in both the unisex and women’s models. (Photo: Courtesy Blizzard Tecnica)
Tecnica Mach1 LV 130
Size range: 24-31
Gender: Unisex
Flex: 130
Last: 98 mm
Price: $975
Tecnica Mach1 LV 120
Size range: 24-31
Gender: Unisex
Flex: 130
Last: 98 mm
Price: $850
Tecnica Mach1 LV 110
Size range: 22-27.5
Gender: Unisex
Flex: 110
Last: 98 mm
Price: $725
Tecnica Mach1 LV 115 W
Size range: 22-27.5
Gender: Women’s
Flex: 115
Last: 98 mm
Price: $975
Tecnica Mach1 LV 105 W
Size range: 22-27.5
Gender: Women’s
Flex: 105
Last: 98 mm
Price: $850
Tecnica Mach1 LV 95 W
Size range: 22-27.5
Gender: Women’s
Flex: 95
Last: 98 mm
Price: $725
