Exclusive: The History of the Look Pivot

We sat down with Dennis Gaspari, Dynastar/Looks Vice President of sales to discuss the history of the Look Pivot from the first models that arrived in 1963 to its current incarnation. The Look Pivot can easily be dismissed as just a turntable heel with a lot of elasticity, but it really is a whole system that relies on its longitudinal spring toe piece that allows the iconic heel design to perform to the level it does.

Dennis and I discuss the heritage of the Pivot’s race history from Jean Claude Killy in the 1960’s to Alberto ‘La Bomba” Tomba in the 1990’s, along with its domination in the freestyle world. Because of its short mount distance and low rotation weight, the Pivot is on the feet of over 90% of mogul competitors. These attributes of the Pivot are also the reason Pivots are on the skis of many recreational skiers looking for the balance of safety and performance .

With the addition of the great schematics of SkiTalk contributor Rick @RickyG Glesner, and along with examples of Pivots from every generation, Dennis and I were able to go though many of the incarnations over the years. We break down Look’s history into segments from the 1960’s, 1970’s, 1980’s, 1990’s and 2000’s to the present. Each chapter focuses on key models and variations along with some interesting tidbits and antidotes.


Overview from video:

• 1960’s: The original Look Nevada
• 1970’s The Look Nevada evolved into the N Series with variations starting with the N17 to the popular N57 and N77
• 1980’s: Look carried over the N series and this is where we start seeing the modern Pivot emerging with the angled heel, integrated rear brake. In the 80’s we also saw the XM toe with upward release and the early versions on the Z toe
• 1990’s: The Z toe became more a Y than the previous triangle and we also saw the influence of Rossignol with their purchase of Geze and the multi directional toe as the FKS
• 2000’s to Present: There was a “new” Pivot released around the turn of the century marketed as the Axial and PX, this binding was to replace the traditional Pivot but like “New Coke” it was very short lived and the original Pivot (and FKS) returned. Both the Rossignol FKS and the Pivot ran concurrent until the early 2010’s when the Rossignol Group decided to eliminate the Rossignol brand for bindings and market all the bindings as Look. In 2015 SkiTalk (then Pugski) started the “Bring Back the Pivot 15” campaign and the high performance Pivot 15 returned.

Today the Pivot is one the of the most asked for bindings in retailers and it is a binding for discerning skiers who accept no substitutes.

Please also check out SkiTalk.com's Retrospect of the Look Pivot HERE.