Hubert Immler

Hubert Immler, the Austrian ski-boot developer known across World Cup racing as the "Skischuh-Papst" (ski boot pope) and, in English-language coverage, the wizard of boots, died on 15 September 2026 after a short, serious illness. He was 64. Born on 6 June 1962 and raised in Alberschwende in Vorarlberg, he trained as a carpenter before entering the ski industry as a tester for Kastle in the early 1990s.

His first dedicated boot service role was with Lange from about 1994 to 1996, working with Austrian racers including Kilian Albrecht, Hans Knauss and Gunther Mader as the Lange group grew from a handful of athletes to more than forty. In 1996 he joined Atomic and led development of the Tritech race boot used by Norway's Lasse Kjus when Kjus won medals in all five alpine events at the 1999 World Championships in Vail and Beaver Creek. Immler later told Ski Racing Media that Kjus raced four different boots across those five races, none of which he had skied before arriving in Colorado. Atomic boots Immler influenced were later raced by Bode Miller on the way to Miller's first overall World Cup title.

From 2002 to 2006 he worked at Tecnica and Nordica, refining the Dobermann platform and helping develop the Tecnica Diablo. Athletes in Tecnica boots reached the Olympic podium in Turin in 2006, including Austria's Reinfried Herbst (slalom silver) and Finland's Tanja Poutiainen (giant slalom silver). In 2006 Immler moved to HEAD in Kennelbach, near his Vorarlberg home, and within months helped create the foundation of the HEAD Raptor race boot for Bode Miller and Didier Cuche. Success followed quickly for Cuche and Miller, and later for Ted Ligety after Ligety joined HEAD.

After years with the German Ski Association's equipment program he joined Marcel Hirscher's Van Deer project by summer 2022, where he remained until his death. Colleagues and athletes remembered not only his technical judgment about plastics, cuffs, hinges and buckles, but his patience with younger racers at odd hours. Olympic champion Anita Wachter called him the ski boot pope. Ski Racing Media journalist Peter Lange wrote that if a hall of fame for ski-boot developers existed, Immler would be elected on the first ballot. He is survived as a husband and father; a funeral Mass was held on 21 September 2026 at the parish church in Alberschwende.