Kilian Jornet and Emelie Forsberg Move to Coros
Coros has just confirmed that they are now sponsoring Jornet & Forsberg, who are two very well-known mountain runners.
I try to cover stories with a tech angle and the tech angle here is the confirmation of the continuing rise of Coros as a GPS sports watchmaker…and sponsor of top athletes!
Background
Kilian Jornet has been sponsored by the Suunto watch company for quite some time and Emelie Forsberg was sponsored by Salomon, with both these brands part of the wider Amer Sports corporate umbrella.
Forsberg (Sweden) is a multiple international gold medallist and competes in events including trail running (sky running, mountain running) and ski mountaineering. Jornet (Catalan, Spain) competes professionally in the same sports as his partner and is a winner of several prestigious ultra marathons.
Jornet and Forsberg describe themselves as life partners and they have a young child together. Both are competing in 2022.
What’s The Deal?
The commercial terms of the deal have not been announced I would guess it to be a few tens of thousands of dollars a year each (plus a free watch or two)
Both athletes have chosen to use the Coros Apex PRO which includes all the features they need for their sports which are said to be; low weight, a Ski Touring mode with auto ascent/descent detection, SpO2 (Pulse Oximeter) sensor with specially designed Altitude mode, Trail Running Mode, Global Topographic Off-line Maps, Sapphire Glass, and others.
So What?
Do we conclude that Coros simply offered more money than Suunto or are there dark clouds gathering over the headquarters of Suunto Oy? OR maybe just a shift in focus for both companies?
Coros also recently sponsored Eliud Kipchoge so they have clearly set aside a substantial budget for sponsorships in the key disciplines they target and Coros is definitely targeting all the marathon++ disciplines that we’ve talked about here so far plus mountaineering as well. Very much the home territories that were once for Suunto and Garmin.
But this isn’t a simple check-signing exercise. Coros make high quality, ‘proper’ watches for extreme sports like these. They are pieces of high spec’d quality hardware with very many features onboard, lots of longer distance runners DO use and like Coros.
Coros really do sell good numbers of watches now with a special favourite being the Pace 2. The announcement of the Pace 2 in August 2020 probably marked the change in fortunes for Coros.
No doubt they will have more exciting news later this year.
new Coros Apex 2 Pro Review – Apex Pro – best yet from Coros
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I was expecting Coros or Polar to sponsor Killian for 2022.
Suunto going out of the Amer Sports family and to a low-end Chinese holding company implied to me that the sister brand sponsorship for Salomon athletes with Suunto watches was going to end.
Garmin sponsors a bunch of pro cycling teams but only, I think, 1 runner: Courtney Frerichs. Some Nike-sponsored runners wear Nike-branded Apple watches. (They are head and shoulders the market leader and sponsoring athletes in running seems not to be their strategy.) Polar sponsors a bunch of different sport athletes — particularly europeans. Coros have been on a blitz of sponsoring road and trail running athletes and “influencers”.
The only surprise to me here was they didn’t ask him to endorse the Vertix 2.
Polar missed a big opportunity to improve their brand awareness in trail and ultra running. Maybe Coros just out-bid them. Based on no knowledge and pulling a guess out of the air, I imagine this is a 6 figure deal not a 5 figure deal.
Setting aside the €€, Polar watches don’t match the needs of Kilian nor his partner for mountain sports.
Tha fact that he lives Suunto despite being aware of what they might have in the works might be a clue for Suunto’s future.
Or not.