Salomon Welcomes 7 Amputee Athletes As Brand Ambassadors

New Para-Team members include runners, skiers, snowboarders and a dancer who have been working with the brand’s Service 2 Athletes team over the last three years using the Hopper blade that Salomon helped develop with Airbus.

Salomon is proud to announce the inclusion of seven new athletes as brand ambassadors. The group of amputee athletes will be using a full complement of Salomon gear—shoes, apparel, bags and winter sports equipment—as well as a prosthetic “blade” developed in collaboration with the Hopper Project.

The team is comprised of runners, hikers, snowboarders, cyclists and a dancer. Each has their own unique story, but all share a common love for the outdoors that was hindered by their amputation… until recently. Thanks to the Hopper project, a collaboration between Airbus Humanity Lab and engineering students from IMT Mines Albi in Toulouse, France, the seven new team members have been able to regain the confidence to hike, run and even ski and snowboard. Hugo and Victor, who were both students at IMT Les Mines, have spent 3 years turning this project into a full-blown company that provides running prostheses for more than half the price of a regular running prosthesis. Patrick Leick, the Service 2 Athletes Manager for Salomon Footwear, has worked with developers, engineers and scientists at Salomon to assist in creating the prosthesis and the outsole used for the Hopper prosthetic blade.

“Our objective is for them to be able to practice all the sports that Salomon covers and more,” Leik says. “We now have a prosthesis for running on trails that we have helped developed, we aim to develop a specific outsole for road running and we are also looking at winter sports. I have experienced so much support from inside Salomon, from our CEO Franco Fogliato to Guillaume Meyzenq, Vice President of Footwear, as well as people from various internal teams who have helped to tell the story of these incredible individuals.”

The athletes joining the team are:

Jérôme Bernard – runner, hiker and triple amputee who played a pivotal role in getting the entire Hopper Project up and running more than three years ago.
Boris Ghirardi – trail runner who participated in the Sierre-Zinal trail race in 2022 and in the Annecy Relay-Race in 2023.
Fabrice Baudet – runner and biker who finished 687^th in the 2023 Etape du Tour cycling challenge and also ran the trail Blanc du Semnoz and the Annecy Relay Race in 2023.
Sarah Legrand — snowboarder and runner who ran the Annecy Femina Race in 2023 and participated in the Salomon Speed Project, a 340-mile all-women team run from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.
Lucas Liens — runner and snowboarder who ran the Half Marathon des Sables Wadi Rum in 2022, the trail Blanc du Semnoz and the Annecy Relay-Race in 2023, and who will soon join the French para-snowboard team.
Fayçal Toumi – dancer and runner who ran the Annecy Short Race in 2023 and has been working with Patrick Leik on a skiing set-up for amputee skiers.
Julien Veysseyre – triathlete and France para-triathlon vice-champion who ran the trail Blanc du Semnoz in 2023.

HELPING AMPUTEES ACCESS THE OUTDOORS

In 2023, Boris, Lucas, Fayçal and Fabrice ran the Relay Race at the Annecy Maxi Race, each covering roughly 20km and 1,300m of elevation in teams of two. Sarah ran the Femina-Race (16km and 970m elevation) during the Annecy Maxi Race weekend and also took part in a collaborative, all-women running project in the US that covered 340 miles from LA to Las Vegas. In October, some of the new team members will travel to the Golden Trail World Series Grand Final in Italy to take part in the race alongside the best trail-runners in the world. In 2022, the group also took part in the Hopper 3000 project, climbing a 3,000-meter peak in the French Alps. (Watch the film here.)

“There is a bit of pressure coming from becoming a Salomon athlete for sure, but mostly I feel challenged to go even further!” admits Sarah, already thinking about what races she will attend next year. “I twisted my ankle at this year’s Femina Race in Annecy, so I’m looking to go back there to do better. I’m potentially going to run Trail Blanc du Semnoz, and I’m hoping to run a 20km race at some point, hopefully next year!”

The Hopper project will reach well beyond trail running. Patrick Leik is working with longtime Salomon product developer Félix Dejey to adapt the outsole of the blade for road running. The team is also working with Salomon’s Winter Sports Equipment team—including Sylvain Merlin in the snowboard department—to understand how a similar prosthesis could be created for winter sports. The Salomon apparel teams are also working to create specific clothing to better accommodate athletes with a prosthesis.

THE GENESIS OF THE HOPPER PROJECT

This story began when Jérôme Bernard, a triple amputee, contacted French aircraft maker Airbus to develop a more affordable prosthesis using leftover composite materials from planes. Ten students from the engineering school IMT Les Mines spent four months working on this project before reaching out to Salomon to work on the outsole of the prosthesis. Alongside Patrick Leick, they spent several months testing different prototypes with Jérôme and Boris Ghirardi, on the trails and in the biomechanical laboratory at Salomon. Thanks to decades of biomechanical knowledge gained from creating footwear for runners, adventurers and hikers of all levels—and the grippy Contagrip technology that has been developed and refined by Salomon over the years—the team was able to create a durable outsole for amputees to use when walking or running in the mountains. The overall cost of the blade has been cut in half compared to previous prosthetics. The students have now created a company to make this prosthesis available to the general public. The new prosthetic “blade” is now available to purchase at 1,950 € through your professional prosthetist.

“This is such a great case for open innovation,” says Guillaume Meyzenq, Salomon’s Vice President of Footwear. “By regrouping skills, we have been able to achieve things that are much greater than what would have been done on our own. For Salomon, this is not a project meant to make money; just to make the world a better place. Being able to offer our expertise in footwear innovation and biomechanics for good is an amazing opportunity. In a world where everything is fast and volatile, the HOPPER project is proof of that familiar saying: ‘If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.’”

Check out the Salomon RIA Foundation Member profile here .