Jérémie & marius - the swiss knives

Skiing, kite surfing, mountain biking, hiking, climbing ... if it's on a board or in the mountains, we're there! Over the winter we completed an important assignment: testing the future freeride skis from Wedze, Decathlon's skiing brand. Verdict?

Hello, we're Jérémie and Marius ! For 2 years, we've also been known by the name of "The Swiss Knives" through our videos.
We are both 20 years old, we are students at an engineering school in Lausanne and have always been passionate about board sports. Over the winter we completed an important assignment: testing the future freeride skis from Wedze. So we're going to tell you a bit more about us (and blow our own trumpet a little) and about the skis that we've been pushing to the limit.

The swiss knives

Jérémie & Marius - The Swiss Knives

The swiss knives, a riding duo

Marius and I have known each other since college and we quickly found we had shared passions. Both from the town of Chambéry, we were still quite young when our parents put us on skis and then we followed the classic route: slalom poles on Wednesday, slalom poles on Saturday, slalom poles on Sunday,… in short, we started out by working hard on our parallel turns at the Chambéry ski club and then I joined Marius at the small club of La Feclaz when we were at secondary school.

Excitement is high waiting for the day!

We have always loved skiing on powder at the edge of the pistes and whenever it snowed too much to plant our poles, we went in search of powder snow with the coach… that was amazing!

Then, as for lots of others, our studies meant no more club and no more track but instead we carried on going skiing with friends on the pistes and then further and further afield, even though that meant carrying our skis on our shoulders to find the good routes! For Marius it wasn't really a new thing and reminded him of his freerando outings with his father when he was younger.

It puts you in a good mood

The ski day begins the day before or the week before when we start checking the weather forecast, making our own forecasts, deciding where we are going, … excitement is high waiting for THE day and even if we plan everything, there are always some fun surprises:
1 /better weather than we expected
2 / 10 cm more powder
3 / a good decision taken at the right time for a crazy descent.

It puts you in a good mood, and we don't need much else when we have skis on our feet to make us happy!

I THINK THE PERFECT SKI DAY GOES A BIT LIKE THIS: SNOW (OF COURSE), SOME GOOD MATES, THE SKIING, SOME SALAMI AND GOING HOME EXHAUSTED IN THE EVENING.

Becoming involved in the development of wedze skis

The Wedze adventure began at PRIVATE HIGH TEST last winter where Marius was invited and where I won a place thanks to the photo competition on Instagram.

Wedze is a brand that is growing hugely and starting to do some really interesting stuff. On site, we hit it off with the team and over the weekend we consolidated our ideas: Wedze does much more than just entry-level products now that they are taking on the technical side! Finally, we were contacted again to test the skis for an entire season and give our feedback ... give us some skis and ask us to ski with them as much as possible in different conditions? Er, go on then!! Here we are with the SLASH 100 on our feet as we go off to criss-cross our way around the four corners of the Alps!

The slash ... verdict!

But in all seriousness, here is our opinion on the SLASH 100 freeride skis.
In just one word: multi-purpose. It's pretty amazing, the Slash 100 skis are every bit as good as any other freeride skis I've skied with: both on the piste and in the powder we had a blast. You know, like any kid who has spent years on the track, even though we love going out in fresh powder, a lovely turn on freshly groomed snow is still exciting! These skis give you 100mm under the foot and this is exactly the right waist width for us, it planes well. Then for practising (= no long or very steep assignments) there's no need to think about anything in the morning, we just grab these skis and go. With the rocker being super progressive at both the front and the back, at the start the back rocker feels a little weird when you're not a freestyler but it is very playful so you quickly get used to it and sometimes you can try out new and exciting things with varying degrees of success.

The only downside point of the ski: the bindings! It was not very consistent in terms of quality and especially the binding placement indicator was very centred on the ski which is similar to off piste/freestyle skiing. But an upside, however, was that I was able to move it back very easily and adapt it to a setting more in line with my way of skiing (if I wasn't testing it I would have changed the bindings to put on lighter ones and moved it back a few more centimetres). This observation allowed us to highlight how easy it is to adjust the skis sold as part of a pack ... but also the advantage of selling the ski on its own. Marius would have preferred the skis to be lighter, giving him increased elevation in freerando but then they would hold less well on the piste… dilemma!

Freedom skis!

The SLASH 100 is therefore the right compromise for someone who is already comfortable on the piste and who wants to get out, go freeriding and continue to enjoy carving on the piste.
You can only have one pair of skis in the garage (or in your 20m2 if you're a student like us) that works for everything! For us, 4 of us in a Renault Twingo heading off on an adventure, these are freedom skis!

The final word?
If we can continue working with Wedze on stuff like this, we would do it every day!
The team is super open to discussion and energetic and responsive whenever we suggest something. So thank you to the Wedze team and as they say: "See you on the slopes"

Cedric piatek

Digital leader

#powderday