Putting the foot in before buying boots

“FEET ARE a nuisance, they come in all shapes and sizes,” quips Neil Smith, who fits ski boots at Great Outdoors in Dublin’s Chatham Street, as he measures my ankle width, foot depth, the widest part of my feet and their length. It turns out those foot-quirks can happen on the same person – my feet differ from each other by half a size.

Ski boots, on the other hand, don’t come in as many sizes as you would think. While they write full and half sizes on the side of the boot, the actual boot shells just come in full sizes; the size differences are usually in the inner sole and sometimes the inner lining.

The inner soles that come with all ski boots are “rubbish” according to Smith, who recommends buying one separately for a good fit. These can either be custom moulded or bought off the shelf.

Boot sizes can vary considerably between companies so you must try on boots, says Smith: “The sizes are just numbers on a box.” Although technically, the numbers relate to how many centimetres long your feet are.

A couple of years ago, Great Outdoors sold 342 pairs of ski boots and 10 pairs were brought back to the shop because they didn’t fit properly “and with eight of those pairs, the customers had just picked the boots off the shelf and bought them”, says Smith, illustrating the need to have boots fitted properly.

For a start, what fits in the shop is not going to reflect what happens on the slope; the shop is warmer so the boots will be more flexible than they’re going to be out in the cold where they stiffen up. Also, your boots will loosen by up to half a size after you’ve skied in them for a few days. “That’s why rental boots in your own size can feel big,” says Smith. And floppy boots can make for sloppier skiing: “You can’t control your skis as well and it can damage the knees,” says Smith demonstrating by swinging his own knees far to one side showing how they get forced out of alignment.

Once you have boots fitted correctly you will find that you have to make less effort to control skis, he says, and in icy conditions it will be hard to control even the sharpest edged skis if your feet are flapping about.

Yet, some people will prefer a looser fit than others. If you’re into cruising red runs then you can have looser boots than those who attack the slopes and race. Smith fitted boots for Irish Olympic skier Shane O’Connor who got two sizes smaller than his normal fit to better control his skis.

That’s not so ideal for holiday skiers who would have to constantly bend their knees forward to keep the toes from cramming against the front of the boot.

And that’s the main thing with ski boots, once you have them you don’t want to think about them. “The last thing you want to be is uncomfortable. You just want to think about skiing,” says Smith.