Our top ten activities requiring specialist footwear

Part 1

Okay, you may think its difficult getting hold of shoes in your size, as most places seem to stop their men's ranges at an 11 or 12 (maybe 13). Admittedly there are specialist retailers of large shoes out there, such as www.lobaseshoes.com but if you want to try something a bit more specialist, which requires specialised footwear, and which very few people take part in, then you could be really struggling. Here's our top ten list of sports and activities for which getting the right equipment could be a mission impossible for big footed men.

Luge

You've seen the competitors at the winter olympics in Vancouver flying round the sheer ice bends with their feet pointing this way and that to try and control the sled, then wondered when they get to the end of the course and try to leave why they slip and slide all over the place. After all, if you have a sport on ice you'd have thought the footwear would have some sort of grip on it to help keep upright.

Well, not luge shoes, or at least until recently. Adidas luge shoes aren't available in retail stores or to the general public, so if you fancy a pair for sledging in your local park you'll be out of luck. They're only available to professional athletes and are designed to be as aerodynamic as possible, so zips up the front and very little in the way of seams or grips is the order of the day. Adidas' new style are also designed to be slightly easier to walk in, although you wouldn't know it to look at them. They'll set you back about £100, which is cheaper than the £200 plus you would pay for a luge helmet. I was thinking about impersonating a professional lugerista (or whatever they're called, “lugists” maybe? I went with lugers originally but that's a type of German pistol from the second world war so doesn't really sound right) to try and find out from Adidas what size they do them up to, but given lugeristas are generally short and skinny I reckoned they'd be on to me pretty quickly. My money's on them going up to a size 11 UK at most.

Rock Climbing

This is actually quite a popular sport (compared to lugeristaing at any rate) with participants all round the world and in all shapes and sizes. You'd think therefore that getting larger sized shoes for it would be pretty straightforward but trust me it's anything but. Having tried it a few times in my life I have always been forced to use whatever shoes I arrived in rather than a pair of hire boots. Its a good think I hadn't come straight from work I suppose. Normal trainers work okay for climbing rock faces and climbing walls with massive footholds you can get plenty of grip on. But when you have smaller to holds or sections where you need a lot of grip, they just aren't up to the job.

I can see that big feet would potentially be a disadvantage in climbing too. You have a lot more foot hanging out over open space so a longer lever to hang your weight on, making the toes work even harder to hold on. However, at least with proper climbing boots you have more support for the sole of your foot and lot more grip.

The last time I went to a climbing centre in the UK the largest size they had were an 11 UK, which I was told was more like a 10. Apparently Scarpa sells a boot up to a 12 1/2, but still too small for most big footed men I fear. I've put a picture of it underneath though to give you some pangs of longing for new shiny kit. Most of their climbing shoes stop at a size 10 though, which is mental. And they've got a shoe called the Women's Thunder, which can't be right either.


Skiing

Skiing is obviously a very popular sport and as such you'd think there'd be no difficulty in getting a wide range of styles and manufacturers to choose from when looking for larger sized ski boots. However this couldn't be further from the truth, at least when looking to buy rather than hire. In my search I have been to various ski shops and various manufacturers websites and generally they stop at a Mondopoint 31.5 – 32, although not all manufacturers seem to use the same Mondopoint system for some reason (there is only one so I'm not sure what they're up to), with the occasional manufacturer going up to a 33 (which is a about a 14 UK, but actually feels smaller because I've tried skiing in 33s and they hurt, a lot).

But some of them have a guilty secret. You see, they don't want the man in the street to have access to large sizes for some reason. I suspect its part of some personal vendetta by the small-footed chairmen and women of the ski manufacturers who have been shunned by their larger footed winter sports brethren, the snowboarders (and if you don't believe me, have a look at what size they do snowboard boots up to here http://ridesnowboards.com/boots/bigfoot). However, if they reckon they can sell a lot of them at one time then they are happy to do so. Having struggled in my too tight size 33 boots whilst up skiing at Cairngorm late last year, I went to try and hire a larger pair from the ski hire, expecting to be met with guffaws and mockery (like “what do you need skis for with feet that big” etc). However, I was both shocked and surprised to find that the hire boots they had from a major European manufacturer went up to a size 18 UK. I happily installed myself in a pair of 15s and got on with enjoying the day.

Ballet

Now admittedly this isn't an activity I have ever tried, have any intention of trying or would be physically capable of trying even if I wanted to. My impression of male ballet dancers (based I suppose mainly on Billy Elliot and Wayne Sleep) is that they are all quite short and slight men with little body weight, which must make supporting it on the tips of your toes that much easier. As such, I'd have thought men's ballet shoes would have stopped at about a size 9. Given there's quite a lot of work goes into making them (according to a programme I saw on the Discovery Channel once, in case your thinking I have just a little bit too much knowledge about this subject) and how small the demand must be for larger sizes, I was surprised to find that on the first website I looked at they had ballet shoes available up to a size 13 UK.


Scuba Diving

This is a sport which maybe doesn't spring to mind immediately when thinking of things which require specialist footwear. However, trying to get both fins and boots in large sizes isn't easy in this country. Diving around the coast of the UK is, as you would imagine, pretty damn cold and generally requires a full body dry suit. You can get these in standard sizes in which the boot component generally goes up to a 12, or you can have them custom made which obviously costs a lot more. When investigating this previously though, the boots on custom made items still tended to stop at a 12, because the rubber soles they used were pre-made and then attached to the custom suit. No point having a size 15 boot which the sole doesn't cover completely.

You might think it would be easier in the States, where its warmer and there are consequently more divers and generally bigger footed people. However, one US website offers fins up to XXL, which in their sizing chart equates to a 12+ US, so not very big at all. Their boots weren't much better, stopping generally at a 13 US. To give them their due though, it was huge website with tons of stock and I couldn't be bothered to look through every single pair of boots and fins to see if they went larger. Having feet the size of flippers will just have to do us for the time being I suppose.