First Look at New Gear for World Champs: Swix Poles are Round Again?

By Gavin Kentch

We’ll have a more substantive preview of this year’s World Championships up before the races start, likely tomorrow in advance of Thursday’s sprints.

But for the time being, here’s a quick look at what seems to be a new model of ski pole about to drop from Swix.

(Disclosure, there are no ads currently on this site from anyone, certainly not from Swix. This is certainly not a sponsored post. Rather, (a) my readers are super interested in new gear, and (b) it looks like I’m getting this posted a day or so before Swix does and I can’t pass up the chance to break industry news, even if fairly frivolous news.)

Take a look at this still from a recent video of Jessie Diggins shared by USSS media earlier today:

image credit: screenshot from video by Leann Bentley for U.S. Ski & Snowboard

What do you see here? New Swix poles, I suspect. They’re round, it appears, which is a notable change from the last several iterations of the Triac line.

Here’s a closeup of the handle and the top of the shaft from a different point in the video:

These are obviously new graphics running down the length of the shaft. The wordmark “swix” is much larger here, and the background color of the pole shaft has gone from a fairly uniform dark red throughout to a brighter red on the top half of the pole, then black on the bottom half. The presentation of information at the top of the shaft, immediately below the handle, is different here as well.

To my lay eyes, this looks like the same strap and handle system that has characterized the Swix Triac system since at least the 3.0. Or if it is different, it is not earth-shatteringly different. The baskets, similarly, look like a fairly standard TBS basket.

… that leaves the shaft, which seems to be round (like, it has to be said, virtually every other pole brand on the planet). This is a change, if so; Swix Triacs have been triangular for roughly a decade now.

I can’t reach anyone at Swix right now to get a sense of whether this is an actually new pole, or just new graphics on a 4.0 Aero. Stay tuned for a formal PR announcement on this soon, I am sure. The most recent story on the Swix Instagram account (screenshot from earlier today) implies that the next model will be the > 4.0 Aero, so points to me for breaking this news now.

Update: I zoomed in on different parts of the video, and it definitely says 5.0 on the shaft. So there you have it: Swix Triac Aero 5.0, dropping probably tomorrow.

Additional update: Thanks to my biathlon-savvy readers for gently pointing out that multiple athletes were already skiing with this model across the Biathlon World Championships that just wrapped up in Lenzerheide. I am sheepish to have completely missed this — that will teach me to be quite so siloed in my cross country–specific world — but I sincerely appreciate learning this.

Here are some photos of the Triac 5.0 on course in Switzerland last week (click through for slideshow):

In conclusion, here is a humorous meme from 2017 about the introduction of new technology in the reduced-handle Triac 3.0.

Racing in Trondheim starts tomorrow with the qualification race, largely populated by athletes from less traditional ski nations — when did you last see a skier from Haiti or Malta on a start list? — then continues on Thursday with a skate sprint populated by more recognizable names. In light of this leak, expect at least half the field to have new ski poles on Thursday.

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