RIP Sven Coomer, The "Forrest Gump of Ski Boots"

Originally posted on Powder | By Ian Greenwood | Last updated Mar 12, 2025 12:50 PM ET

Sven Coomer, founder of ZipFit and a ski boot design visionary, passed away on Monday, March 10, at 84 in Carbondale, Colorado. According to the International Skiing History Association, he was with his children, Robin and Seth, during his last moments.

Coomer’s impact on the world of ski gear design was outsized. In the equipment locker, you’re bound to find his fingerprints everywhere.

He revolutionized the design of the modern ski boot and contributed to or developed an enormous list of products that included the Nordica Dobermann boot and the three-piece Raichle Flexon boot, alongside countless other innovations, like custom-molded boot liners, women’s-specific short cuff boots, and custom-built footbeds.

Coomer lived fully. Raised in Sydney, Australia, Coomer was a natural athlete and became the youngest person to participate in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, where he appeared in the pentathlon. He eventually moved to Sweden and developed a passion for skiing while he studied engineering.

At this time in his life, Coomer, according to his memoir, was recruited by the British Special Forces and added an unlikely accolade to his resume by participating in a clandestine mission to retrieve the Dalai Lama from the clutches of Chinese forces in Tibet. That’s just one of his feats—only four years after he learned to ski, Coomer joined a team that underwent a ski tour across the Alps that covered hundreds of miles.

“He’s like this Forrest Gump figure; you just can’t believe he did all these things,” Jeffrey Colt, Coomer’s protege at ZipFit, told POWDER last year.

After a move to France—and then Switzerland—Coomer landed a job at the Heierling ski boot factory, which was followed by his first ski boot design gig with Nordica, which involved the Sapporo boot and the influential Grand Prix boot. Over the years, the Grand Prix would evolve into the Dobermann.

Coomer came to the U.S. in the 1970s, running the ski schools at Solitude Mountain Resort, Utah, and Mt. Rose-Ski Tahoe, Nevada. In 1979, in Mammoth Lakes, California, Coomer co-founded Footloose Sports, a ski shop that pioneered boot fitting techniques and remains in operation today. The ensuing period saw Coomer work on the proprietary OMFit cork composite material used in ZipFit liners—a re-moldable product skiers everywhere still swear by. With POWDER, he wrote a technical column.

Coomer’s life was chronicled in the 2023 autobiography Sea to Ski, and his contributions to skiing have been recognized by the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame, where he is a 2021 inductee. The Hall of Fame called Coomer “the most prolific and influential boot designer of the modern era.”

This article first appeared on Powder and was syndicated with permission.

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