No one expected breakdancing—the street dancing style that incorporates head spins and freeze moves—to ever become an Olympic sport. Even members of the World DanceSport Federation, the governing body of competitive dancing, were surprised to learn in 2020 that “breaking,” as it is called, had been added to the lineup for the 2024 Games in Paris.

“It was a shock to everybody,” says Martin Gilian, a member of the World DanceSport Federation, and one of nine judges who will score the Olympic breaking competition on August 9 and 10. “We had no idea how we got into the Youth Olympics in 2018 and suddenly we were finding out we’d be in Paris.”

The truth is that breaking has resonated with younger audiences since it was born on the streets of New York City’s South Bronx more than 50 years ago. In fact, as an original element of hip-hop—alongside deejaying, emceeing, and graffiti—breaking has never stopped pushing boundaries. Is it an art form or a sport? Debate it all you want, but to me, it’s clear that breaking is both.

Breaking’s inclusion in the 2024 Summer Games is nod to the graffiti we see in Europe’s first collection of modern and contemporary art at Centre Pompidou in Paris; and to the rap of this year’s Olympic hype men Snoop Dogg and MC Solaar of France. I’m pretty much obsessed with breaking’s Olympic debut. Drawn to its combination of history, physical strength, and creative expression, I’ll be in the stands at the Paris Olympics on August 9, cheering on the athletes, which fans call “B-Girls” and “B-Boys.” On La Concorde in the heart of Paris, next to BMX freestyle, skateboarding, and 3X3 basketball, in one big “hip hop celebration” breaking will take place outdoors in an urban park. Here’s what to know about the newest Olympic event:

How the Competition Works

Breaking’s top athletes draw from thousands of tricks, and they improvise signature moves never performed by anyone in competition until the Olympics. Athletes will be judged on their technique, dance vocabulary, execution, musicality, and originality, with each category counting for 20 percent of overall score.

On August 9, 17 B-Girls will face off in one-on-one 60-second dance battles. Among them will be 35-year-old American Grace Sun “Sunny” Choi, who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s business school. Also in the lineup is 21-year-old Manizha “Jawad” Talash, a refugee and Afghanistan’s first female breaker who fled the Taliban, as well as Italian Antilai Sandrini, who goes by the name “B-Girl Anti,” and is an artistic gymnast and cheerleader-turned breaker who is also a competitive Kung Fu athlete.

Then, on August 10, 16 B-Boys will follow the same format, laying down flips and flares. According to Gilian, the event borrows some DNA from martial arts and gymnastics. “Breakers are always trying to evolve and make their own signature moves,” he says. In this evolving and improvisational sport, breakers introduce personalized moves from the main elements of standing moves, called “top rock,” floor moves, called “down rock,” and freeze, which is holding a pose in an unusual position.

“It’s about improvisational storytelling, following a concept throughout the entire round. For example, a dancer could hold his chin the entire round, even while going down on the floor in a power move (a twist and spin)” says Gilian. “Or he might hear the sound of a bird that inspires him to express the sound throughout the dance. It’s as creative as possible.”

In a round robin, the top two from each of the four men’s and women’s groups will advance to the quarterfinals, then semis, and a best-of-three final for the medals, putting on a show for the Olympic audience while they can. Sadly, breaking is expected to be left off the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games.

Getting fired up is necessary at this new Olympic sport that relies more on audience participation than other Olympic events.“One of the most important things to the sport is creating an atmosphere so the dancers can interact with the audience,” says Gilian “We don’t want you to just come and watch. You really need to be involved if you’re there and make some noise because the better the atmosphere, the better the performance.”

Breaking is also the only Olympic event where the judges get to perform. “We’re paying a tribute to hip-hop culture, so at the end we’ll dance to a live rapper, while the DJ spins the music,” says Gilian, who goes by the breaking name B-Boy MG—all the judges double as breakers and Gilian, who used to compete, is also a rapper.

The Hip-Hop History

Gilian first witnessed breaking in 2004 in a Run DMC MTV music video as a student at Florida International University (Florida, a breaking hub, is also home of Olympic medal hopeful B-Boy “Victor” Montalvo). But of course breaking dates back to the 1969 gang activity in the South Bronx, when instead of taking a swing at each other, each side would pretend to fight in a dance battle.

As the story goes, on August 11, 1973, a Jamaican immigrant who went by DJ Kool Herc—the godfather of hip hop culture—was performing at an apartment and invited party goers to dance during percussive “breaks’ in his music. From the Black and Latino neighborhood street culture in New York City in the 1980s, the term “breaking” evolved in the media into “breakdancing” after the popular Rock Steady B-Boys and the B-Girls rose up in pop culture while touring the world stage. And as breaking faded from urban America in the 1990s, it was picking up in its first organized competitive world circuit heavily centered around Europe—with the first major global “Battle of the Year” in Germany in 1990, followed by the first Red Bull breaking competition in 2001.

An Olympic Underdog

In 2016, the World DanceSport Federation proposed several competitive dancing styles to organizers of the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The federation hoped that one would be chosen, and Gilian and others believed that Latin dancing might be singled out. When the International Olympics Committee, which oversaw the event, chose breaking “it came as a surprise, but was extremely popular for some reason,” Gilian remembers.

In 2020, when breaking was officially added to the 2024 Paris Games, the decision drew some pushback. Critics argued that dancing wasn’t a sport. It wasn’t the first time the Olympics had to consider art as competition. Between 1912 and 1948, the Olympics included competitive events in the artistic categories of architecture, literature, music, painting, and sculpture.

Officials with the IOC and World DanceSport Federation faced plenty of hurdles to get breaking ready for the Olympics: standardizing rules and judging while maintaining the sport’s artistic side. Rules require DJs to pick the same song at random for both dancers. The hosts, who narrate the competition on the mic, maintain a central role as physically close to the breakers on the dance floor as possible.

“We made sure that the audience could get as close as possible, so they could feed off the energy of the crowd and maintain the true essence of breaking. The IOC really came through and we’ve accomplished that,” says Gilian. He says that breaking has experienced a resurgence in popularity since it was announced as an Olympic sport.

“We’re seeing all around the world that parents are more motivated to get their kids into the breaking—and nine and 10 year olds are learning basic moves in as little as two days that took me 10 or 11 months to master,” says Gilian. “There’s been a huge growth in the last few years all around the world, especially in Asia, Europe, and Latin America.”

Breakers to Watch in Paris

The B-Girls

B-Girl Sunny: Grace Sunny Choi is a former gymnast who picked up breaking as a student at the prestigious University of Pennsylvania Wharton School. After graduating, she began battling in world-wide competitions, going on to win silver at the 2022 World Games.

B-Girl Ayumi: With a recent win at the Olympic Qualifier in Shanghai, 2021 world champion Fukushima Ayumi of Japan is one to watch out for. At age 41, this veteran has the dynamics (transitions between down and up rock) and the experience to go far.

B-Girl Ami: Ami Yuasa, of Japan, was introduced to hip-hop at age six. Today, the 25 year old is known for her footwork and flow (the art of combining moves in a creative and rhythmic way), after taking world championship titles in 2019 and 2022 and making the Red Bull BBC One World Final in 2023.

B-Girl India: India Sardjoe, of the Netherlands, has been breaking since age 7—while also playing football as the only girl on an all-boys’ team. Today, she’s fearlessly competing at age 16 as one of the youngest Olympic Athletes, after winning gold in the 2023 European Games.

B-Girl Nicka: This Lithuanian breakdancer is only 17 years old yet she’s the current world champion. Dominika Banevic has it all–vocabulary, dynamics, flavor, and form and could take the win.

The B-Boys

B-Boy Victor: Victor Montalvo, 30, is living the dream of his father Victor Bermudez and his uncle Hector Bermudez—twin-brother breaking pioneers who helped popularize the sport in Mexico in the 1980s. After growing up in Florida, he’s the current world champion. Expect traditional style with loads of signature moves.

B-Boy Hong 10: Born and raised in Seoul, South Korea, Kim Hong-Yul, 40, is a three-time Red Bull BC One champion with experience on his side. Loaded with an arsenal of innovative moves—arguably the most original in the game—he’s one to watch.

B-Boy Shigekix: This Olympic flag carrier from Japan is a Red Bull BC One All Star and the 2020 Red Bull BC One champion. Shigeyuki Nakarai is a former freestyle dancer known for his control and fast power moves (using the whole body in a rotational move while balancing on the hands, elbows, head, or shoulders).

B-Boy Phil Wizard: Canada’s Philip Kim was once a kid watching breaking in the street shows of downtown Vancouver. He took up the sport and went on to win gold at the 2022 World Championships and the 2023 Pan American Breaking Championships, also taking silver in the 2023 World Championships.

B-Boy Lithe-ing: China’s Qi Xiangyu, 19, is the new kid on the block coming up quickly after becoming runner up at the Olympic Qualifier Series in Shanghai and taking fourth at the 2023 World Championships.

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On a windy January afternoon, our boat covers the nine miles from Boston Harbor Shipyard & Marina to its offshore mooring in a swift 35 minutes, plunging five feet down and back up over waves that look like rolling hills in Vermont. We have come to Graves Light Station on a good day. A few years ago, the mooring was ripped out of the ocean floor by a gale, and a breaker dragged Dave Waller’s boat, a U.S. Coast Guard cutter he bought used, into the shoal below the lighthouse.

“We cut off the cabin and converted it into a barge to haul heavy materials out to Graves,” says Waller, referring to the historic lighthouse he owns. You have to be pretty creative to live in an offshore lighthouse in the first place. Waller has been coming here from his home in Malden at least twice a month for eight years.

At the mooring a few hundred feet out from the station, we hop into the dinghy, his sixth—the sea took all the others—and from the stern I look at Waller, 59, in his thick-rimmed black and gray specs under a matching beanie rolled above his ears, rowing in galoshes and yellow waterproof fishing suspenders. Arriving, we balance on periwinkles and barnacles to step from the dinghy onto a jetty, tie up to a piling, and walk 40 feet on slippery rocks to the base of the lighthouse. That’s when I look up, and realize we’re only halfway to the entrance.

Exactly 40 feet overhead, like something from a dizzying Escher painting, is the maroon door to his second home, Graves Light Station. It’s 36 degrees out, and the sweeping waves splashing up make the scene even more surreal. The original 1905 iron ladder, corroded in aqua that matches the sea, runs from the granite under my feet from sea level up a tight parallel against the side of his 113-foot lighthouse.

“We’re climbing up this?” I ask, as if it’s not obvious.

Midway up the steep tower sits a bridge that he rebuilt last summer, an exact copy of the original from 1905, but raised up 27 feet, hoping that this one will withstand storm waves that get wilder every year. It’s Graves’ third bridge—the first one washed away in the Blizzard of 1978; the second was destroyed in the “Perfect Storm” (as titled in the book and movie) of 1991.

In my winter gloves, treadless rubber boots, ski pants, and a life jacket, I climb, pausing on each step to prevent my forearms from seizing up in the cold. At the bridge, I can finally move laterally, my soles sinking into the planks, and I tell Waller, with only 13 feet left, “I don’t like heights.” We cross the bridge to the former oil room he turned into a guest house.

The Graves project may be the most elaborate and celebrated lighthouse restoration in history. Next summer Waller, who has been awarded by the American Lighthouse Foundation for his work in preservation, will finally finish the near unimaginable with the installation of a rare antique first-order Fresnel lens with the refracting glass once commonly used to intensify light for mariners. But when you own a lighthouse, the repairs are never really done.

We walk the fresh pale planks, turn around, and I see it … why Waller would throw down the most money—just shy of a million dollars—ever spent privately on a lighthouse. Breathing the salty clean winter air, out in the middle of the harbor, we stand in front of his time machine. The lighthouse towers overhead, tall and proud and quiet, like an ode to maritime history. Gulls circle round in clear skies, and time slows. I haven’t looked at my phone since we left.

“When you’re out here, the whole world stops, as far as you’re concerned,” says Waller. “It’s peaceful. I heard a plane just now, but there’ll be days when there’s just the rise and fall of the tide and the wind.”

We’ve all stopped to take a picture of these icons, lighthouses, at some point, but in another 50 or 100 years we might not be able to. No longer used as a main navigational aid, the lighthouse as we know it is slowly being rendered obsolete. Navigation has largely transitioned to mariner-operation systems. Vessels mostly use satellite, GPS, and radar to dodge rocks, avoid the bottom of the ocean or bay, and dock safely in a harbor, even if some—especially small boats—still rely on lighthouses as visual aids, like buoys. After the events of 9/11 over a decade ago, without a primary need, government lighthouse maintenance funds were absorbed during the incorporation of the Coast Guard into homeland security, leaving enough only to maintain the automated lights and foghorns.

The 2000 National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act was established to maintain these historic structures, saving many, including Graves. But for an increasing number of individuals, nonprofits, and municipalities, the upkeep of the aging and often remote towers seems practically impossible against rising seas and ruthless corrosion. When the Coast Guard, which now owns only a small percentage of lighthouses, no longer needs a lighthouse, the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act facilitates a transfer with right of first refusal, at no cost, to a public or nonprofit organization. The catch? The act sets a high bar for ongoing and pricey preservation and education. When there are no takers in this phase, private owners like Waller go to bid on lighthouses through public auctions. To date, 82 lighthouses have been transferred to public entities and nonprofits, and 66 have been sold for $8.2 million total. And, unless a lighthouse is decommissioned, the Coast Guard must be granted access to keep all the automated lights shining for those few mariners still looking for a guiding light.

We make our way on up the tower, where Waller shows me the original blueprints of Graves, then pulls out ledgers containing 800 pages of old keepers’ logs, handwritten in India ink and printed by the U.S. Lighthouse Service. The entries range from the weather— “40 degrees, light rain in the morning” to more compelling matters: “Captured a rowboat full of German sailors in the fog, held them until Navy picked them up three days later. Asked Navy to reimburse us for their food; Navy refused.” The Germans had been spies mapping the harbor in World War I.

In 1910, a keeper named Elliot Hadley described the conditions he saw during a storm: “I’ve looked up at solid water rushing in toward the ledges. I don’t know how far up the solid water comes. I’ve been knocked down by it on the wharf beside the light, and opening a window to look out more than halfway [65 feet]Ěý up the tower, I’ve had as much as three buckets-full dashed in my face.”

I ask Waller if he ever imagines himself as one of the lightkeepers. He says no. But he acknowledges his new role, and its uncertainty.

“If I didn’t exist, the ships wouldn’t be crashing into the rocks,” he says, deadpan with his eyes to the floor.

Waller is recognized as an expert and has been an advocate for restoration, appearing in , an Amazon documentary released late last year. The film, also starring the lighthouse historian Jeremy D’Entremont and Ford Reiche, who took on a similar extensive restoration of the Halfway Rock Light Station, in Casco Bay, Maine, is directed by Rob Apse, with a portion of the proceeds preserving Whaleback Lighthouse, at the mouth of the Piscatequa River in Kittery, Maine.

Crossing back over the bridge, we make our way up: five spiral clangy metal flights; past a bunk room, the keeper’s quarters, and a third-floor kitchen; and to the lantern room. In the old days, a light keeper lit the lens and hand-cranked weights to rotate the light, each sending out an identification signal or pattern—Graves’s is two white flashes every twelve seconds—to guide mariners to shore, back where we came from in East Boston. A keeper would clean the light, and anything short of meticulous was unforgivable. Constant maintenance was their calling. “At the cost of your own life, you would keep that light lit,” says Waller. They were relied upon and honored. “It was above being a captain of a ship, because you were the guardian of all the ships,” he adds. Keepers were by-the-book, sober, carefully chosen men. One exception is the country’s actual last official lightkeeper still working for the Coast Guard: Her name is Sally Snowman, and her job and second home, Boston Light, are in jeopardy. From the top deck of Graves tower, Waller points two miles south to Little Brewster Island, home only to Boston Light, the first lighthouse in the United States, built in 1716. Snowman is the only female in history among the 69 others to keep Boston Light.

The Coast Guard, once mandated by Congress to staff and operate Boston Light permanently, has greenlit a search for a new owner through the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act. “In spite of Boston Light’s historic importance, it will be a huge challenge for the next steward to preserve the station,” says Jeremy D’Entremont, when I later reach him inside New Hampshire’s Portsmouth Harbor Light, home of the American Lighthouse Foundation’s local chapter. “Every year storms seem to do more damage.” The glacier land (called drumlins) under both the tower and the keeper’s house, where Snowman, 71, lived half the year for almost 20 years maintaining the place and giving tours, is shrinking.

When I reach Snowman at her home base in the Boston suburb of Weymouth, she tells me, “We’re seeing the most erosion down in the valley in between them. The valley is getting smaller as the ocean is getting closer. When we have high tides with big storms, we actually become two islands.” The damage has limited public access in recent years, and at the bottom of the cliff below the lighthouse, rock-filled cages, used as protection from erosion until they were ripped out of the ground in 2018 by a storm, roll around like tumbleweeds—making the future of Boston Light even more ominous.

Local nonprofits and people in the public sector have begun exploring an ownership transfer of the historic landmark through the 2000 act. “Dave has done such wonderful things with his lighthouse,” says Snowman. “That’s what makes me optimistic that the right entity is out there to work that kind of magic on Boston Light.” She and some lighthouse preservationists hope Boston Light will go to the National Park Service, especially since the station is located within the Boston Harbor Islands National and State Park Area, but there’s no telling what will happen over the next year or two. “I sincerely hope Sally will play a role in its next chapter,” says Waller of his longtime neighbor.

For Waller, who owns a special effects company in Boston, restoring the lighthouse and its artifacts is a continuum of problem-solving. It’s finding ways to reverse 40 years of dark and dirty neglect—1970s linoleum curling up over rotted wood, rusted metal walls, wilting sheets of paint. It means tracking down plumbing to shoot water 96 feet up to the kitchen, and replacing rusting cast-iron stove burners with noncorrosive brass because the salt air rusts everything, even inside. It takes an extra level of patience to piece together 594 handmade glass prisms from Chicago and Australia, dating back 100 years, to form a two-ton incandescent oil-vapor Fresnel lens almost identical to the original now sitting in the Smithsonian, and once one of the brightest in history at 375,000 candlepower. “We always find the answers by asking how they did it back in the day. You realize they had it all figured out long ago,” says Waller, now a pro at finding the right tools and the right people. He even salvaged a stanchion railing from a World War II minesweeper for the mahogany deck.

His first renovation was his Malden home, a 10,000-square-foot Queen Anne style firehouse that had nearly burned to the ground when he and his wife, Lynn, bought it from the town for $32,500. For the Graves lighthouse, Waller dove in again, pinching pennies. When he ran out of money a year into the renovation, he teamed up with another original bidder who matched his million, a local businessman named Bobby Sager, who has hosted celebrities like Sting and Tom Hanks at Graves. Sager is now fixing up two more lighthouses (Minot’s Ledge Light south of Boston and Maine’s Boon Island Light) he landed at auction when they were offloaded by the Coast Guard.

“If you apply too much logic to it—look at the cost, the resale, and the amount of work—it doesn’t make sense,” says Waller. “You can’t determine those things, they’re unknown. I think that’s what attracted me to Graves and to other things in my life. I don’t have to fill in all the boxes before I decide to do something, for better or worse.”

Meanwhile the numbers of lighthouses are declining. About 100 years ago there were more than 1,000, according to the , and now 850 are still standing.

“The Coast Guard has already divested the vast majority of offshore lighthouses,” says D’Entremont. “Eventually, they will probably divest of almost every lighthouse property, with a few exceptions.”

D’Entremont predicts that in 50 years only a small number of lighthouses, if any, will still be used for any navigation. “As far as the preservation of lighthouses as historic monuments, I’m optimistic about the ones that are tourist attractions being saved,” he says. “I’m not nearly so optimistic about the ones that are remote and inaccessible to the public, many of which will eventually face demolition by neglect.”

Many land-based lighthouses and the soil around them are contaminated with lead paint that must be remediated before someone saves them. Add climate change to the mix, and we’re going to lose a significant number of lighthouses in the coming decades. Some sit submerged under the waters of the Chesapeake Bay or are about to topple over in the Great Lakes. With no takers and erosion at its base, the 86-foot Kauhola Point Lighthouse in Hawaii was demolished altogether in 2009. Some have been preserved by gigantic efforts: Already Cape Hatteras in North Carolina, the tallest lighthouse in the country at 193 feet, and Gay Head Light on Martha’s Vineyard, among others, have been from the edge of the sea, a painstaking process involving digging up the foundation and rolling it inland on hydraulic beams. (See of the Gay Head “rescue.”)

Waller and I gaze from the top deck through the windows of his seaswept kingdom at the shoreline towns, historic shipping ports that arose here in the first place because of the water, and we look toward Boston Light. “They always say the best government is a benevolent king because his heart is in the right place,” he says. “Everything gets done according to what he wants. But what happens when the king dies?

“Fortunately for Graves, we really care a lot about it.”

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In 2017 I almost gave up skiing. The boots I’d loved for three solid years had failed me almost overnight. I’d hop off the chairlift and five minutes later, my feet would cramp, my toes would go numb, and pain would shoot up my arches. Blues felt like blacks. I was bailing after lunch. Embarrassment aside, the discomfort was excruciating. The longer I skied and the steeper the terrain, the worse it got.

So I sought out two of the best ski-boot fitters in New England: Lyndall Heyer and Carol Beale, two skiers with 50 combined years of experience fitting boots. They can shred—Heyer was on the U.S. Ski Team in the 1970s—and they can listen, which, in boot fitting, is half the battle. Having fitted at a dozen ski shops, Beale is now a medical athletic footwear specialist. They taught me that a boot out of the box is only a blank canvas for the perfect vacuum-seal fit, because every foot is different.

Ski boots are the most important component of your setup, so it’s worth taking the time to get it right. “Many people don’t even know boot fitting exists or how intricate it can be. They think you’re in a plastic cast so of course your feet will hurt. Not true,” says Beale. But getting fitted for the first time can be an intimidating experience. Here’s how to be sure you’ve found a good fitter and the questions you should keep in mind when you go so you can ski comfortably.

Swap Stories

• There are a lot of factors that inform the ideal fit—talk with your boot fitter and give plenty of context.
• If you need help finding a good boot fitter, ask your community for leads.

If a boot fitter puts you in a measuring device the minute you walk through the door, pump the brakes and talk. “I need to figure out who my customer is, and make sure we have a solid, trusting relationship,” says Beale. She’ll always ask for your ski story. Your level, ski goals, size, previous injuries, other sports, and current skis and boots will all inform the ideal fit.

The customer should know the boot fitter too. The credible ones, like Beale and Heyer, have taken multiple courses from Masterfit University, which sets the standard for their profession. (It’s important to remember that a single certification is not proof you’re getting a caring and skilled boot fitter.) Beale takes it a step further: at BalanceWorks in Rutland, Vermont, she’s a pedorthist, trained to modify therapeutic footwear and orthotics to support your feet and lower limbs. In this field, experience is your friend. If you need help finding a reliable boot fitter in the first place, ask around and check in with your community for good leads.

Get All Your Measurements

• A boot fitter should take five measurements.
• Make sure the fitter measures both of your feet.

After five measurements—heel to toe, heel to the ball of the foot, instep, forefoot width, and calf—I learned that for six years I’d been wearing ski boots an entire size too big. According to Beale, this is not uncommon. It’s easy to talk yourself out of a tight fit when you’re trying on a boot in the store. But remember, as your liners pack out, your boots will only get bigger from the moment you first try them on.

Boots are sized from heel to big toe in centimeters via . Mondo conversions are complicated, though. A would have a woman who wears a size eight street shoe in a 25. Beale would put her in a 24, though. But one şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř editor who likes a performance fit comfortably sizes down two mondo sizes from her recommended. All this to say: try on a few sizes, and talk to your bootfitter about what makes sense for your anatomy and ski style. And don’t forget, despite what some will try to sell you, there are no half-size ski boots, only thicker liners.

Most of us have a dominant side, and therefore a stronger turn side on the hill. This can create varying muscle strength and shape, and many of us are just born with two different size feet, so make sure your boot fitter measures both feet. Beale and Heyer have accommodated mismatched bony protrusions, lengths, widths, hammertoes and curves, claw toes, injuries, and birth defects. “One woman was born with a 23 on one foot and a 25 on the other, so she buys two sets of boots for two different skis,” says Beale.

Ask to Be Liner Fit and Shell Fit

• Look for a half-inch gap between the shell and the back of your foot.
• If your liner is too tight, your boot fitter might be able to stretch it.

At Inner Bootworks in Stowe, Heyer removed the liner to “shell fit” me in three boots. Good boot fitters won’t need make you try on a dozen pairs: they should already have an idea of what boots to pull, based on your feet and ability. And if you try on too many, you might overthink the fit. I climbed in the shell and slid my toes to the front to ensure no more than a half-inch gap occurred between my heel and the back of the boot—a ski racer should have less. Generally, the more advanced the skier, the closer the fit. If expert skiers wear their boots too loose, their exact movements won’t transfer to their skis at aggressive speeds. They may overcompensate by buckling too tightly, putting unnecessary, painful pressure on their feet.

While boot fitters don’t always “liner fit” too, Beale is all for fitting both the shell and liner. When liner fitting, with the liner out of the shell, step in to ensure a snug but comfortable fit: the artery along your instep shouldn’t be too compressed, and the liner should securely grip the back of your heel. If the liner is too tight, the boot fitter can stretch it to prevent loss of circulation in your foot.

Before you try on the whole setup, a good boot fitter will tell you what to expect: a ramp pushing your toes forward that makes the boot feel short until it’s buckled. When you flex forward, the instep buckle and ramp will push your toes back and your heels should reach the back of the boot. In my new Nordica Promachine 95—the first boot Heyer instinctively pulled for me—my narrow foot felt snug, as it should, especially after my old clunky boots. Perfect for skiing on my Black Pearls again when I’m finally out of pain.

Get Fit Right

• A custom footbed enhances performance and comfort.
• If you have balance troubles, you may need canting.

Ski boots are some of the tightest footwear you’ll ever step into. The right fit will feel painted on. “Everything should feel like it’s an extension of your leg and your foot,” says Beale.

Your boot fitter has a big bag of tricks to help dial in your fit. It’s worth it to spring for a custom footbed, which will help neutralize any imbalances from the shape of your foot or your range of motion. Mine eliminates the gap between my arch and the boot, providing great support.

Canting can help align your boot with the natural side-to-side angle of your lower leg. In some cases, this can be accomplished with by simply adjusting the screws on either side of your boot at the ankle. This is especially helpful if you’re bowlegged or knock-kneed. Other solutions include adding foam or plastic pieces to help fill space in your boot and neutralize the position of your foot.

Understand Your Range of Motion

• Your boot fitter should test your range of motion.
• Your leg and foot shapes matter.

We’re born with varying foot mobility on three planes of motion, and our boots should accommodate all of them so we can ski in a neutral stance without a fight. Limited mobility in your frontal plane, which allows your foot to move from side to side, can cause pain in your knees on the hill. If you can’t fully rotate your foot toward and away from the center of the body, along what’s known as the transverse plane, you may have balance problems while skiing. But the most important one for boot fitting is the sagittal plane: the forward flexion of your ankle joint. “If your joint can’t flex, it locks up at a certain point, so when you bend your knee, your heels come up,” says Beale.

Ski boots have varying degrees of forward lean, and you should buy one that aligns with your range of motion. If you are an intermediate skier who lacks dorsiflexion, you’ll likely be happier in a more upright boot. As boots get higher-performance, that forward angle gets more aggressive. If you prefer expert-level equipment but have limited range of motion, your boot fitter can adjust the ramp at the base of your foot to better match your natural mobility.

Consider Height—and Flex

• If you’re a woman with long legs, you may need a men’s boot.
• For newer high-quality plastics, go for a flex rating of 80 or 90 or above.

There’s a sweet spot where boots should hit on the shin and calf. Men’s boots typically have taller cuffs than women’s boots. The thinking behind this is that women’s legs are typically shorter, and they also tend to have a greater curve in their lower leg due to their calf muscles. A shorter cuff may help if you find your calf muscles are being squeezed uncomfortably, and a taller one might be ideal if you’re long-legged and want more control while you ski. Beale wears a men’s boot and encourages similarly long-legged women to consider the option. “So many women come in with bloody shins because they’re in a women’s boot and they’re taller than me,” says Beale. Typically, though, women benefit from the lower cuff and snugger heel of women’s boots.

Flex rating, which inconveniently isn’t standard across boot brands, ranges for recreational boots from 60 to 130 and higher for racing boots. “The truest flex ratings for high-quality boots with good plastics should start at 80 for women and 90 for men,” says Beale. “Avoid boots under those numbers.” If your flex rating is too low, your knees will fall forward. The boot won’t bounce back coming out of one turn to prepare you for the next, causing your midfoot to bow or the tail of your skis to skid out. If your flex rating is too high, the stiffness will force your backside to drop behind your feet, into the “backseat” position. You’ll see your skis chatter, or vibrate off the snow, and you’ll lose your edge and ski out of control. “Exceptions aside, the more aggressive the skier, the higher the flex, the thicker the shell, and the denser the liner,” says Beale. When you’re trying on boots in the shop, bend your knees deeply a few times and get a sense for how much support and resistance feels right for you.

Afterward

If you’re in pain after you’ve gotten your new boots, speak up, but before you get all Princess and the Pea, ski in your boots for three days in the thinnest, longest ski socks you can find, and graduate to thicker socks as your liner packs out over time. Since the process involves some trial and error, work with a boot fitter near you who can continue to modify the boot later if necessary. (Some ski shops include the fitting with the cost of your boots.) In the end, if something still doesn’t feel right, go back and ask about it. After all, as Beale likes to say: “Boot fitting is an art, it’sĚýa science, and a little voodoo.”

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In a ski lodge basement at Sugarloaf Mountain, Maine, the contents of Natalie Rines Terry’s locker sit exactly as they were left last springĚýafter she passed away from natural causes, on April 22, 2020, at 96 years old. There’s a snowflake beanie, a fleece, and a commemorative pin. Not far away, her official gravestone reads “Sugarloafer Since 1951, Lifetime Member of PSIA (Professional Ski Instructors of America).”

Beginning in the late 1930s, Rines TerryĚýskied with grit throughĚýa timeĚýwhen girls’ school sports didn’t even exist.Ěý“Way back in the day, being a strong female athlete made her feel a little bit different, but she always found a way to be competitive,” says her daughter Sarah Carlson, who now works as a ski coach. “Rines TerryĚýtaught more students than anyone else in the East,”Ěýher co-workers and friends told me over and over again. She was Sugarloaf’s most requested instructor in history, teaching tens of thousands of students over the course of her 50-year career.ĚýIn 1996,ĚýSkiĚýlisted Rines Terry asĚýone of North America’s top 100Ěýski instructors, and in 2012, she was inducted into the Maine Ski Hall of Fame. But more than all the accolades, she had a genuine love for the sport.

On a cold day this January, duringĚýSugarloaf Mountain’s first-ever ski seasonĚýwithout Rines Terry, I suit up and skate over to Carlson on the trail named after her mother, Natalie’s Birches. On one side of us is the path to one of Sugarloaf’s earliest condos,Ěýowned first by Rines Terry and now Carlson. On the other sideĚýisĚýthe spot where Rines Terry stepped into her skis every week of the seasonĚýfor 50 years. “We’d see Nat coming over from her condo, a little unsteady with her walking stick, and just as we were about to go help her, with the click of her bindings, all the tightness and instability would disappear. She would flow down the hill,” says her longtime friend Tom Butler, Sugarloaf’s vice president of skier services. Next to the lift at the bottom of her run is a chapel, where her planned funeral service on the mountain never took placeĚýbecause of the pandemic.

Carlson and I creep up the ropeway, eyeing the trail where it all began 70Ěýyears ago.ĚýIn 1951, long before this chairlift or any other at Sugarloaf existed, Rines Terry stood right there onĚýseal skinsĚýwith Sugarloaf founder Amos Winter. They were hiking up what was at the time the only trail cut on the mountain:ĚýWinter’s Way. Growing up in Waterville, Maine, Rines TerryĚýand her friends taught themselves to ski by climbing up a rolling pasture and snowplowing down. By 1939, they were hopping the rope tow as part of the ski club at a local resort, Titcomb Mountain. She hadĚýbeen among the lucky onesĚýto take lessons fromĚýAustrian Hannes Schneider, one of the pioneers of modern ski instruction.ĚýRines Terry was “the woman who excelled in everything that interested her,” reads a letter from herĚýlifelong friendĚýLorrain Norton.Ěý“The PSIA exam included a giant slalom. Many of the men failed. Not Nat. She was exultant and we were so proud of her.” She was a housewife in her fortiesĚýby the time then-ski school director Harry Baxter spotted her perfect turns and later, in 1969, hired her to teach.

About 4,000 feet up, at the top of the Skyline lift, the temperature dips below zero,Ěýbut “it’s the perfect day for a Natalie run,” Carlson says. “Nothing stopped her.” She was like a diesel engine, fueled by a full slate of studentsĚýeven in the nastiest weather. If she saw she wasn’t scheduled to teach a lesson, Butler says, “She’d be sitting there with her hands on her hips, daring you to go ahead and assign her a student. She loved a challenge.”

Rines Terry was a natural athlete—in her younger years, she wasĚýa championĚýfigure skater, competitive diver, swimmer, and later a tennis player and golfer—and sheĚýcould watch a skier make just two turns before pinpointing even the most subtle change to improve their technique.ĚýBut there was more to it than faultless technique. As a customer service expert long before it was seen as standard practice, she genuinely cared about every one of her students. The proof was in the piles of books and folders full of clippings on instruction she left behind: the stacks of journals with meticulous notes on every student she ever taught. Rines Terry kept in touch with them throughout the year, and in the summer, she’d send cards with their lesson plan for the following winter. She also kept detailed records of the weather and snow conditions during those 50 seasons. “You want to know what the weather was like on March 10, 1981? Natalie could tell you,” Butler says.

Carlson and I traverse west into the sun like Rines Terry’s husband,ĚýGeorge “Tim” Terry, would have. “Dad always worked his way across the mountain to get the best light throughout the day,” Carlson says. Tim wasĚýinvolved in the early development of SugarloafĚýandĚýwas Rines Terry’sĚýrock, even more so after their only son was killed in a cycling accident in 1987 at age 33. Tim alsoĚýsaw their family through the unexpected loss of Carlson’s husband in 2002Ěýand Rines Terry’s own battle with cancer. ButĚýTim died from cancer in 2011, andĚýafterward,ĚýRines Terry’sĚýstudents became evenĚýmore important to her.

It’s rugged days on the mountain like these, when the winds are blowing sideways and you can’t feel your toes, that Rines Terry was famous for toughing it out. She skied on—simply because she loved to.

Our final run of the day, on Whiffletree, was the last that Rines Terry ever took,Ěýin March 2019.ĚýWhile I ski down, wishing I could’ve been one of herĚýstudents, at least I can still learn from her approach: to make sure every turn counts.

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