Longines dedicated to alpine skiing
To mark the 2014/2015 alpine skiing season, the Swiss watch brand is proud to present a new Conquest collection chronograph able to display time to one hundredth of a second: the Conquest 1/100th Alpine Skiing. A real tribute to Longines’ long tradition of producing trial timekeepers for alpine skiing, this steel chronograph meets the highest standards in precision for the sport and contains a unique movement that surpasses previous generations.
Longines, a timekeeper for sporting performances since 1878, is launching a new line of chronographs specially developed for sports that require an extremely high level of precision. The Conquest 1/100th series responds to the needs of athletes, professionals and sports fans besides many others, since it measures time at multiple intermediaries and has an intuitive analogue display that shows the time to one hundredth of a second using a separate hand. All of this is possible thanks to the latest generation of quartz movements developed exclusively for Longines by ETA.
Since its debut in the alpine ski trials of 1933 at Chamonix, Longines has been faced with a number of challenges and has always succeeded in overcoming them to be able to comply with the highest standards of timekeeping for skiers’ performances. Each new innovation has allowed alpine skiers to enjoy a level of precision never witnessed before. However, this level of precision was always quickly surpassed given the brand’s infinite quest for perfection. Today, to mark the 2014/2015 alpine skiing season, Longines is unveiling a watch that is part of this fascinating technological evolution: the Conquest 1/100th Alpine Skiing, the black dial watch in the Conquest 1/100th series.
According to Walter von Känel, President of Longines: “Longines shares over 80 years of emotion and adventure with alpine skiing competitions. You only have to mention Kitzbühel in 1978, where the Austrian skier Josef Walcher and Sepp Ferstl from Germany tied exactly to one hundredth of a second upon crossing the finish line of the famous Streif. It was a feat measured by Longines! We are very proud to have contributed towards developing the technology used in this discipline. It all started with the Chronoson Longines in 1948, before moving onto the first quartz chronograph in 1956 and now we are paying tribute to this rich heritage with our Conquest 1/100th Alpine Skiing chronograph!”
This chronograph is specially designed for professionals and alpine ski enthusiasts who are looking for a watch capable of measuring intermediate times from the starting gate to the finish line, gate by gate, to the hundredth of a second. For skiers plummeting down a difficult course at high speed, time is the real challenge, the variable that needs to be controlled in order to join the legends and leave a mark in the history books of the sport.
The demands required for Longines to reach such an extreme level of precision have also led to the development of the new unique quartz movement, the L440. It includes a microcontroller with a flash memory that allows the watch to be reset instantly and split times to be recorded. With a diameter of 41mm, this bright steel model has a black dial that displays the hour, minutes, small seconds at 6 o’clock, the date and chronographic functions: a central seconds hand, a 30 minutes counter at 2 o’clock and a 12 hours counter at 10 o’clock. The hand in red displays time to one hundredth of a second and is the watch’s crowning glory at the centre. The model is also fitted with a steel strap and a triple safety folding clasp.
