FasterSkier

Tag: Mantra Wax

  • Gibbs Returns to Coaching, This Time with Team Australia

    Gibbs Returns to Coaching, This Time with Team Australia

    Randy Gibbs with Liz Stephen, whose skis he waxed at 2013 Spring Series. Courtesy photo.
    Randy Gibbs with Liz Stephen, whose skis he waxed at 2013 Spring Series. (Courtesy photo)

    A serviceman for the U.S. Ski Team for eight years, Randy Gibbs recently called it quits. With a new baby in the house – his family’s first child – the World Cup lifestyle didn’t seem like a good fit.

    “I have a new daughter who is 20 months old now, and it was just going to be too much traveling to be gone 100 days over the winter when she’s just a year and a half old,” he explained in a phone interview. “I couldn’t. It’s hard enough to go just for two days. It was a good decision. It’s been great to be around her as much as possible.”

    But he was, in a way, still itching for the international racing trips, as well as for coaching – which he had done for 14 years in Minneapolis before joining the U.S. Ski Team staff. So when Australian Head Coach Finn Marsland asked him about leading one of his team’s trips this season, Gibbs was intrigued.

    That’s how he ended up in Strbske Pleso, Slovakia, last week, coaching the Australian team at World University Games.

    “It worked out perfect for me, because it was just a two-week trip and it was awesome,” Gibbs said. “It was really fun to be a coach again, too.”

    The trip was a success for Australia, with Jessica Yeaton and Phil Bellingham both finishing eighth in the individual sprints, best-ever results for their country.

    “Philip just missed the final by, like, a binding length,” Gibbs lamented. “He just missed the lucky loser. He could have had it I think. It was really close. He was really bummed he didn’t have just a little bit left to push and get in there.”

    Callum Watson, who is recovering after a horrific ski crash that left him with a punctured lung, also notched two top-30’s.

    Overall, Gibbs found the Australians fun and easy to work with – and said that the transition from acquaintance to coach at a major international event was “seamless”.

    “It was really easy because all the athletes are really accommodating and were really interested to hear my ideas about things,” he explained. “We just bounced ideas off each other – I didn’t want to come in there and change everything they had been planning all season. They all pretty much already had a plan. But each day, coming up with a strategy for the next day and going through everything from the captains meetings, and things like pointing out strategic places to make moves on the course.”

    Gibbs and Marsland are hoping to continue the partnership. Bellingham and Watson may attend Spring Series in Sun Valley, Idaho, where Gibbs will be waxing for the Sun Valley team and U.S. Ski Team member Liz Stephen (“Burke doesn’t have much of a team anymore,” Gibbs said of her club affiliation), but will add the Aussies to his roster.

    He’s also looking at making up to three trips with the team next season, and working towards 2017 World Championships in Lahti, Finland, as well as the 2018 Olympics.

    “It depends on how everything goes with their budget and their team,” he said. “It’s perfect for me because I can work a little bit, and still make a difference and still have a great time and help them out. But I don’t have to commit to a whole 100-plus night season.”

    And as for the World University Games itself, Gibbs – who spent years attending World Junior and U23 Championships as well as traveling the World Cup – was impressed with the event.

    “There was some really good competition,” he said. “Especially in the men’s. It was like a Russian army out there – some pretty high-end dudes. And the courses were extremely hard there. They were harder than 99% of the World Cup venues, for sure. Steep, pretty long climbs, and not really any rest. Some good high-speed corners and downhills.”

    He explained that the event is one of only a few series that FIS explicitly sanctions and sends representatives to. The others are senior, junior, and U23 World Championships, the Olympics, and the World Cup. And some racers who have competed at those other events were also at World University Games – like Russia’s Andrey Larkov and Anton Gafarov, Kazakhstan’s Anastasiya Slonova, Poland’s Maciej Starega, and much of the Japanese team.

    “It was really well-run,” he said. “Even the opening ceremony was really hard core! There were thousands of people who drove up the mountain to watch, too.”

    He’s now wondering why it isn’t on the schedule for top U.S. racers. (The University of Wyoming has been sending its team for the last several years, but there is no trials-based selection as for World Juniors and U23s).

    “I’ve been asking too, especially now [that I’ve seen it],” he said. “I’ve told those guys that we have to start doing that. It would be a great thing for the athletes who are just below making the World Junior and U23 teams.”

    When he’s not working for the Australians, Gibbs is spending his time on two other projects. The first is a non-profit, Jenny’s Light, founded in the memory of his sister to combat post-partum depression. Gibbs serves as the Executive Director.

    “I’ve been able to do more this winter than previously, which is good too,” he said. “It’s going well and it’s not coming to a grinding halt every winter like it had been.”

    The second is Mantra Wax, a ski wax company which he launched with his U.S. Ski Team coworker Oleg Ragilo in 2013. Business is good, Gibbs said, but with a limited budget one of his main investments is time.

    “It’s basically just word of mouth sales,” he said. “A lot of World Cup teams have bought a bunch of product, more than I thought this season. A bunch of teams at World University Games got some. And a lot of junior nationals teams already have some. Those coaches I’ve known for 20-some years and they are really psyched to try it out. I’ve gotten a lot of good feedback.”

    He hopes to see Mantra Wax make a splash at the upcoming World Championships in Falun, Sweden.

    “I’ve got a guy in Sweden who has been testing on the World Championships courses in Falun for the last month, and he will continue to do so and send me test results, and then I send those to all the World Cup coaches,” he said. “I’m trying to get people fired up about knowing what’s going to work there.”

  • Gibbs Hosting Heavy Medal Technique Camp at West Yellowstone Nov. 24-26

    Heavy Medal Technique camp Postcard Front

    Heavy Medal Technique Camp

    Nov. 24-26 at the West Yellowstone Ski Festival
    A portion of profits will be donated to the National Nordic Foundation, Fast & Female, and Jenny’s Light.
    Heavy Medal Technique camp Postcard Back
    According to organizer Randy Gibbs, former chief of glide for the U.S. Ski Team (who retired this spring after eight years with the team): “We are going to arm participants in our camp with the very same routines and simple drills and nuances currently used on the World Cup. The camp will focus on both classic and freestyle techniques, training tips and ideas and of course, World Cup waxing tips and tricks for having great skis all of the time. There will be many stories from the open road told as well.
    “Our staff includes former U.S. Ski Team Head Coach and 2-time Olympian Pete Vordenberg, Gold Medalist and 3-time Olympian Chandra Crawford, Gold Medalist and 4-time Olympian Billy Demong, former U.S. Ski Team Service Technicians Cory Wubbels and myself. Between the five of us, we have either competed, coached or provided ski service at 15 Olympic Games, 25+ World Championships and 500+ World Cup events.”
    Register at www.heavymedalcamp.com. Space is limited and the prices go up on November 1 so sign up as soon as possible.
    Learn more about the Heavy Medal Camp on Facebook and Twitter.
    mantra wax destress effect
    Camp sponsors include Podiumwear, Boulder Nordic Sport, Mantra Wax, and Clif Bar 
    ***
    Randy Gibbs is the executive director of Jenny’s Light, which his family started in early 2008 after they lost his sister Jenny and her son Graham to a maternal mental health disorder that went undetected. 
  • World Cup Technicians Launch Mantra Wax, a Performance Brand with a Creative Twist

    World Cup Technicians Launch Mantra Wax, a Performance Brand with a Creative Twist

    Randy Gibbs cleaning Liz Stephen's winning skis at U.S. Distance Nationals last week. The wax she was on was from a new company called Mantra Wax, which Gibbs is starting with fellow USST wax technician Oleg Ragilo. Courtesy photo.
    Randy Gibbs waxed Liz Stephen’s winning skis at U.S. Distance Nationals last week. The top coat she was on was from a new company called Mantra Wax, which Gibbs is starting with fellow USST wax technician Oleg Ragilo. Courtesy photo.

    When Randy Gibbs looks at the high-end ski wax on his bench, he finds himself uninspired by the plain vials of powders laid out before him. As a U.S. Ski Team service technician for the past seven years, few know better than he does how important wax is to any successful ski race. But when it comes to the brands of fluorocarbons available to most consumers, Gibbs sees a hole in the market for a product that’s cool, something skiers and coaches would be proud to own.

    “Right now everything is so lame out there. They’re all boring and there’s nothing creative,” Gibbs says. “Not that those products aren’t great; we use every brand, for sure. Everyone has the best wax at certain times for certain things.”

    But Gibbs thinks there’s room for another player at the service room table, and he’s hoping his new company, called Mantra Wax, will be it. Using raw materials that have been developed and tested over the past year and a half by a Russian manufacturer, Mantra aims create a line of top coats that will bring something to the wax market that it hasn’t seen before.

    Mantra’s origins are certainly unique. This past winter, Gibbs and fellow U.S. team serviceman Oleg Ragilo obtained exclusive rights to package and sell the wax, and by October they plan to be delivering the high-end liquids and powders directly to coaches and technicians all over the U.S. and Europe, as Ragilo lives in Estonia and will head Mantra’s presence there. And because they plan to integrate small-batch, limited-release products into the wax line, Mantra aims to make its products cool and somewhat exclusive.

    The Mantra Wax label.
    The Mantra Wax label.

    “It’s going to be more like a whisky bottle or small-batch bourbon where…it’s a cool thing to have in your wax cabin,” Gibbs said. “You put it on your table and the other guy is like, ‘Oh, man. We’re screwed.’”

    Gibbs and Ragilo have started with branding to establish that image. Mantra’s name was inspired by a David Grohl song with the same title, and their wax label could just as easily be an album cover.

    Creative branding aside, Gibbs knows the most important thing in a wax is performance. So how does Mantra stack up next to products from major companies like Swix, Holmenkol or Toko?

    Apparently, pretty favorably. At SuperTour finals, Mantra Wax had the opportunity to answer that question when the Craftsbury Green Racing Project hired Gibbs and two other technicians to help work on the team’s skis. The job became Gibbs’ chance to test Mantra’s new waxes on race day and generate some attention in the process, if the wax was successful. CGRP’s hired service crew included Eli Brown and Gibbs’ fellow U.S. serviceman Corey Wubbels to help him, and  in addition to waxing CGRP’s skis all week the team also adopted Liz Stephen’s fleet.

    The results turned out as well as Gibbs could have hoped. Stephen won SuperTour Finals and the 30 k classic championship, CGRP’s Ida Sargent and Pat O’Brien both podiumed in the classic sprint in miserably wet waxing conditions, and they were joined in the A-Final by Tim Reynolds and U.S. biathlete Susan Dunklee. CGRP head coach Pepa Miloucheva, able to leave the wax room and watch her skiers race for the first time in three years of coaching them, called her athletes’ results in the sprint “one of the best days” for her team all year. Skiers from other teams noted the speed of Craftsbury’s skis all week.

    Oleg Ragilo and Gibbs. Courtesy photo.
    Mantra Wax founders Oleg Ragilo and Randy Gibbs at 2013 World Championships in Val di Fiemme, Italy. Courtesy photo.

    What were they skiing on? Mantra Wax. The new powders won or were near the top of pre-race tests throughout the series and Craftsbury and Stephen raced on Mantra powders and liquids in each race at SuperTour Finals and distance nationals.

    “They were awesome,” Stephen said of her skis in the 30 k.

    Gibbs didn’t know what to expect from the results, but was pleased with the successful outcome of Mantra’s U.S. debut. He brought a small amount of powders with him to California to sell throughout the race series, and by the end of the week he was sold out. Gibbs said coaches returned to him to say that Mantra won a lot of their tests.

    What’s so special about Mantra Wax?

    “Nothing, really, other than it works really well in a lot of conditions,” Gibbs says. “It’s not a risky powder. Some of these powders, if it snows you might as well put paraffin on your skis and go out on training wax, because they get so slow. And this stuff seems to be great in new snow, old snow, manmade snow, wet snow, clean snow, fine-grained, course like out here — so it just works well. I’m not saying it’s going to win the test every time, but it’s going to be near the top more consistently, from what we’ve seen so far.”

    Mantra Wax is so new it’s not yet widely available, but by the fall Gibbs hopes to have an introductory line up and running from the website and from select retail outlets. In Truckee, he sold 30-gram vials of powder for $100 each to help get the brand off the ground, but Gibbs thinks they will eventually retail for closer to $150.

    Mantra Wax turned some heads in Truckee, and to increase the company’s visibility throughout the country it will put sales reps at major U.S. events next season. Gibbs also has his eyes on a few elite athletes to represent the brand, and at SuperTour Finals he and Stephen made plans to make Mantra Wax Stephen’s casual-wear sponsor next year.

    “So far we’ve used their wax every day this championships,” Stephen said. “I want to support Randy and Oleg and what those guys are doing, and at the very least I want to wear what they have going on.”

    Gibbs and Ragilo will continue to work on skis for the USST in the winter, by which point they hope to have two to three powders and four to five liquids as part of the Mantra Wax line, with plans to add klisters, paraffins and kick wax down the road in small-batch, special-edition releases. Gibbs foresees keeping the company relatively small, but for now things are still in the planning stages. He’d been thinking about starting a wax company for years, and now that the pieces are coming together he’s taking things slow.

    “We’re not going make a million dollars or anything, but if we can make a great wax that’s better than everything else and have fun doing it, that’s what our goal is,” he said. “We don’t know what it’s going to evolve into. The Mantra is coming in hot.”

    Gibbs, Eli Brown and Corey Wubbles with U.S. 30 k champion Liz Stephen. Courtesy photo.
    Gibbs, Eli Brown and Corey Wubbles with U.S. 30 k champion Liz Stephen. Courtesy photo.

    Mantra Wax: www.mantrawax.com. On twitter @mantrawax and at www.facebook.com/mantrawax.