Sven Coomer

Sven Coomer grew up riding horses and swimming in the ocean near Sydney, Australia, which led to his being named to the 1956 Australian Olympic team in the modern pentathlon at only 16-years-old.

Coomer studied at Stockholm’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology when he began skiing and then quit school to focus on the sport. He took an instructors training course in Switzerland in 1961 and within a few years was working as the director of ski schools in Utah and Nevada.

The editor of Skiing Magazine invited him to start testing products and in the late 1960s, Coomer was recruited to design boots for Beconta, the US importer of the Italian ski boot Nordica. Coomer developed a series of boots – including Nordica’s Grand Prix – which became the foundation of modern ski boot design.

Coomer later pioneered personalized ski-boot fittings, with customized orthopaedic soles and liners, founding his own company, ZipFit, in 1989. He later moved the company to Aspen, Colorado. He is considered “the father of the modern ski boot.”