Ski boot pioneer and hall of famer Sven Coomer dies at 84

Former Olympian and US Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame inductee Sven Coomer passed away on March 10 of heart failure, with his children Robin and Seth by his side.

Coomer’s lasting legacy is the ski boot you use today. He’s responsible for making plastic ski boots work well just as the popularity of skiing took off in the early 1970s and is considered the “Father of the modern ski boot.”

Born in 1940, he was raised in Sydney, Australia. At age 16, he became the youngest competitor at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, representing Australia in the Modern Pentathlon.

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He was a brilliant natural athlete who mostly taught himself to ski. He tried skiing for the first time at Åre, Sweden, during a spring break from his university studies. In the early 1960s, he talked his way into training with the French ski team the greatest team of the era. He went on to teach skiing in Australia before emigrating to the United States where he became ski school director at Solitude, Utah, and then Mt. Rose, Nevada, where he coached the McKinney kids. In 1968, Doug Pfeiffer at Skiing Magazine hired him as a ski tester at Mammoth.

In 1969, under contract to Nordica, Coomer launched a series of revolutionary boots that established the pattern for every high-performance ski boot built since then. His designs were immediately successful in World Cup and Olympic racing and are still used by ski racers and boot manufacturers around the world. When he left Nordica in 1977, the company had close to 35% of the world ski boot market.

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Coomer-designed boots fit precisely and comfortably. His innovations include the power strap that closes the cuff on all modern high performance boots, the removable liner that adapted readily to the skier’s foot, and the integral high-back “spoiler” and extended tongue, to set the ankle in its strongest position and enable full leverage in powering modern race skis.

Coomer spent close to two decades operating Footloose Sports in Mammoth Lakes, California, which he and his wife Kathy built from scratch with Tony and Andrea Colasardo along with an amazing crew of characters, including Corty Lawrence.

When Coomer wasn’t fitting boots, he continued developing ground-breaking innovations and consulting with ski boot manufacturers. He invented the custom-built Superfeet footbed and trained several generations of retailers in the new art of custom boot fitting. He then launched ZipFit, manufacturing and selling top-quality innovative liners, or “inner boots” as he preferred to call them, for Alpine skiing.

He moved to Aspen in the early 2000s where he met his wife Mary Dominick, who passed away last August. Coomer continued to operate Zipfit out of a home office and provided custom fittings for any clients willing to spend an hour or more in his garage fitting area and listen to him recount his adventures as a skier and ski industry pioneer.

He was inducted into the US Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame in 2021 for his contribution to the industry. He brought comfort and ski-control power to millions of skiers worldwide. Over a 50-year career, he created the boots used by alpine champions and beginners alike. He showed the way forward for an entire industry and is justly regarded by that industry as its best and most prolific designer.

Coomer was ever the optimist and always true to form, even in his final hours. Minutes before his death, he looked at his children and said, “Time for the next adventure, ciao, ciao.”

He is survived by his sister Vicky Murphy, his children Robin and Seth Coomer, and everyone still skiing. The family requests that the next time you’re on the hill, take a turn or two for Sven.