Is it Captain America? Or one of The Incredibles?

No, it’s Joost Vandendries, a Belgian speed skier! A sport in which the goal is to go as fast as possible on skis. It started in 1930 in Sankt Moritz, Switzerland, with a record of 105,7 km/h. The sport has made huge progress since those days. The world record now stands at an insane 254.958 km/h!

Speed skiing was also featured as a demonstration sport at the Albertville 1992 Winter Olympics, where it drew a massive crowd!

Joost Vandendries’ goals

But it will take a lot more than a good deal of cheers from the crowd to help Joost achieve his goal – breaking the 200 km/h limit. Wearing baggy pants or funny hats won’t keep you from breaking the 100 km/h barrier on your speed tracking phone app, but at 200 km/h, every last bit of aerodynamic wizardry needs to be applied.

Local 3D and Aerodynamics specialists

So Joost set off to look for local specialists to optimize both his stance and his outfit: Treedys (Brussels, Belgium) performed a full body scan and Argon (Leuven, Belgium) made a detailed 3D scan of his helmet. These two were stitched together and uploaded straight into AirShaper’s online aerodynamics platform, delivering a full report 24 hours later. Voxdale (Antwerp, Belgium), one of AirShaper’s engineering partners, is currently using that input to design a sleek new helmet.

This chain of different technologies makes it possible to go from a physical object to a complete aerodynamic analysis without designing a single 3D model. In today’s top sports, that development speed & efficiency is what can make the difference to gain that last tenth of a second or kilometer per hour.

Update: JOOST DID IT!

200km/h on skis! After shaping his helmet and stance based on insights and improvements obtained by our simulations, Joost Vandendries broke his personal best! His top speed now stands at a whopping 214,669km/hour! Thanks to his dedication and our technology, he set a new personal best and almost hit the Belgian record (215,311km/h) and ended the season ranked #15 in the world! Watch his insanely fast slope here, thanks to SNEEUWSPORT VLAANDEREN!

What’s next?

Please, do cheer when you see Joost flying by at speeds over 200 km/h – the push of your breath might actually make the difference for him to break the Belgian record!

Click here to learn more about speed ski, the fastest non-motorized sport on earth! Also, don’t forget to contact us if you want to set the next speed record!