Marcel Hirscher didn't just collect trophies during his 15 years on the World Cup circuit — he quietly obsessed over equipment the whole time. Teammates and coaches got an earful about flex patterns and edge angles from the Salzburg-born racer, and that fixation is now the foundation of a ski brand: VAN DEER-Red Bull Sports.

Hirscher's racing CV is absurd. Sixty-seven World Cup wins, two Olympic gold medals and eight straight overall titles made him the most successful Austrian ski racer ever before he retired in 2019. Two years later, in 2021, he launched his own company, VAN DEER — a name nodding to his half-Dutch roots, with "hirsch" being German for deer. Red Bull, which had sponsored him for a decade, liked what he was building and came aboard as a partner in 2022, turning the brand into VAN DEER-Red Bull Sports.

The idea behind it is refreshingly unpretentious for a label with this much racing pedigree: Hirscher believes every skier, from first-timers to weekend regulars, deserves equipment built to World Cup standards. He describes his mission as taking the hundredths-of-a-second thinking from the racecourse — where a tiny change in flex or edge angle matters enormously — and translating it into skis that make ordinary skiers better. The skis are still proven at the top level, too: they've racked up gold medals and dozens of podiums on World Cup courses, and Hirscher himself raced on them during his comeback in the 2024/25 season.

The current range splits into six lines. The FREERIDE SERIES covers off-piste skiing, while the H-POWER SERIES is built for all-day skiing across any terrain, and both are new additions sitting alongside the PRO, RACE, JUNIOR PRO and TOURING SERIES. Craftsmanship leans traditional and no-nonsense, but the materials and testing are thoroughly modern — with athlete feedback feeding straight back into development.

For holiday skiers, the pitch is simple: gear designed by someone who spent a career hunting tiny performance gains, now adapted for regular people. If you're planning an Alps trip and fancy demoing something with genuine racing DNA, this Austrian brand is worth a look on the rental wall or in the shop.