Lange

In 1963, came one of the most significant turning points in skiing history : Bob Lange, the owner of a company manufacturing plyuréthane products in Dubuque, Iowa/US, created the first fiberglass boot with lace closure. An intuition that soon revealed itself as a genial solution, recognized by all as the first step in the modern era of winter sports.

The first experimental production was immediately adopted by the best athletes. It consisted in a small range of trailblazing products wich were none other than the first real rigid, plastic boots : a revolution, a technological innovation that, in 1967, led Nancy Greene to her world cup win and that, in 1968, was crowned with 5 gold medals at the Grenoble winter olympics.

The Lange competition boot was consecrated as the « racing boot » and this characteristic still remains...
More than that, for the first time in sports, Lange showed a particular feel for the requirements of women skiers, to whom it proposed itself with the self-modeling flo boot, particularly suitable for the shape of the feminine foot.

In the early seventies, in front of the enthousiasm of american and european skiers, it seemed almost impossible to meet the growing Lange demand from all over. The european manufacturing headquarters was established in Mollaro, near Trento in Italy.
And at the Val Gardena world championships, not less than 16 teams wore Lange boots and among the Lange skiers there was also Gustavo Thoeni and the great champion Bernard Russi.

In 1973, Lange, which was enjoying a booming sales, was bought by one of the foremost american companies in the field, the Garcia corporation, of Teaneck, New Jersey.

The modern Lange history started at the end of the eighties, when Laurent Boix-Vives, president of Rossignol, acquired control of the company and launched it again. It was the period in which lange consolidated its dominion in the competition fields thanks to the XR line, and to Mark Girardelli, Aberto Tomba, Deborah Compagnoni, Luc Alphand... and the best athletes of our days like Hermann Maier.

But the Lange successes are not limited to the competition fields. The continuous products innovations, coming from the ressources of the Rossignol Group, the know-how and the technicity of the brand, make Lange one of the first three brands in the world.