Northwave are an Italian company, and actually do more than just shoes, with a range of clothing, and a separate branch of the company who do snowboard boots. Their MTB shoes arrived in 1993, and have been on the feet of champions ever since. Pezzo, Cippolini, Dahle-Fleesja, Evans, Boonen, Hermida... you know, handy riders. At home, you’re likely to spy Northwave shoes on much of the Torq-Merida squad.
However, just because a brand chooses to sponsor a lot of riders, it doesn’t mean they make a great product. Except in this case, Northwave do – they really do.
While Northwave produce a range of road, touring and trail shoes, what we were sent to test was the latest XC race shoe - the Extreme XC. Following in footsteps of the…