Suunto Speed & Race:

[Yannick]

Hello Suunto Team,

I am a Suunto Race 2 user and a passionate Speed Windsurfer.

I am very happy with my Race 2, and I could also see myself choosing a future Race model when the time comes.

I would like to share an idea that I believe could bring a real added value to the Race product line and, more importantly, to a much wider community of athletes.

Suunto Speed & Race
Measure. Compare. Improve.

The name Race already strongly reflects speed, performance and competition.

My suggestion would therefore be to develop a broader “Speed & Race” ecosystem, designed not only for running or traditional racing, but for all sports where speed, trajectory, technical performance and time matter.

This could cover, for example:

Speed Windsurfing
Windsurfing
Windfoil / Foiling
Kitesurfing / Kitefoil
Wingfoil / Wingsurf
Surf / SUP racing
Alpine skiing
Ski speed / freeride / ski touring
Snowboarding
Mountain biking
Trail running
And more generally, all speed and gliding sports

1. A real performance mode for speed sports

For nautical sports in particular, displaying speed in knots would be extremely valuable:

Current speed
Maximum speed
Average speed
Short-duration speed performance

For Speed Windsurfing, the watch could also calculate the key performance indicators commonly used by the community:

Best average speed over 2 seconds
Best average speed over 5 seconds
Best average speed over 10 seconds
Best average speed over 100 m
Best average speed over 250 m
Best average speed over 500 m
Best average speed over 1 nautical mile
Alpha Racing
Average of the five best 10-second runs

The important point would be to calculate the best average speed over each distance or time period, rather than simply recording the highest instantaneous speed.

2. GPS-Speedsurfing / GP3S compatibility

For Speed Windsurfing, another major opportunity would be strong compatibility with GPS-Speedsurfing.com / GP3S.

Ideally, a Suunto device could provide:

Highly reliable GPS tracks
Accurate speed calculations
GP3S-compatible data
Easy export of sessions
Potentially direct synchronization with GPS-Speedsurfing
Support for the main GP3S performance metrics

In the long term, this could even allow Suunto devices to become officially recognized tools within the GPS speed-sailing community.

3. Suunto Segments

I think this concept could become particularly powerful in skiing.

For example, imagine a ski run where Suunto automatically identifies a commonly used segment:

Suunto Segment – Piste X
Distance: 1.2 km
Elevation: 280 m
Your time: 1:42
Your average speed: XX km/h
Your maximum speed: XX km/h

The user could then compare their performance with:

Their own previous attempts
Their friends
Other Suunto users who completed the same segment
Potentially anonymized community results

This concept could then be extended far beyond skiing:

MTB trails
Trail running
Windsurfing
Foiling
Snowboarding
Ski touring
Other sports where GPS-defined sections make sense

This would turn GPS data into something much more meaningful: a way to measure progression and compare performance on the same terrain or course.

4. Measure. Compare. Improve.

This is what I believe could make Suunto Speed & Race particularly interesting.

Measure
Speed, acceleration, distance, elevation, trajectory, time and other sport-specific metrics.

Compare
Compare your current performance with your previous sessions, your friends, or the wider Suunto community.

Improve
Identify your best runs, best segments, best speeds and areas where you are progressing.

The Suunto app could become the place where all of this performance data is brought together.

5. A concept for an entire community

What I particularly like about this idea is that it would not be limited to one sport.

Speed Windsurfing is a relatively specialized discipline, but the underlying need is shared by a much larger community of athletes:

people who want to measure speed, compare performance and improve.

This could therefore create a common performance ecosystem across water, snow and mountain sports.

And for the Speed Windsurfing community specifically, I believe there could be a genuine interest in a Suunto solution that combines a high-performance GPS watch with accurate speed analysis and GP3S compatibility.

6. A natural evolution for the Race line

I believe “Speed & Race” would also fit naturally with the identity of the Race product family.

The Race 2 is already designed around performance and competition. Extending this concept toward speed and gliding sports would give the product a distinctive identity that goes beyond simply adding another sport mode.

It could become a real performance ecosystem for speed and racing, supported by both the watch and the Suunto app.

This could potentially be developed progressively through software updates and new sport-specific metrics, without necessarily requiring new hardware.

I would be very interested to know whether this type of concept could be considered for the future development of the Race product line.

Thank you for taking the time to read this suggestion.

I would be happy to provide more detailed ideas, examples or feedback from the Speed Windsurfing community if this could be useful to your product and development teams.

Sorry for the long post, and thanks for reading all the way through!

There’s a large community of outdoor speed-sports enthusiasts who are really looking for more performance metrics and data.

[Egika]

@Yannick this is quite an elaborated text.

Some less elaborated answers:

• speed in knots is already available for water sports
• there is a wingfoil S+, that already has max speed over 2s, 5s, 20s
  it is very easy to program the required distances as well
• segments is a key feature of Strava. Not sure if this is patented. Or if Suunto could compete with Strava here.
  There is an S+ for Strava segments as well

[sky-runner]

@Yannick said:

Suunto Segment – Piste X
Distance: 1.2 km
Elevation: 280 m
Your time: 1:42
Your average speed: XX km/h
Your maximum speed: XX km/h

The user could then compare their performance with:

Their own previous attempts
Their friends
Other Suunto users who completed the same segment
Potentially anonymized community results

Is that what Strava segments already provide? I may be mistaken but the concept of segments may be patented by Strava which may make it difficult for other brands to implement them. And furthermore, Suunto community is just too small to make investment in segments worthwhile. Even Garmin attempt to do segments has never taken off and as far as I know nobody uses them.