ALPINESTARS SUPERTECH R BOOTS

TESTED BY: Bruce MILES: 10,000 TIME: 2 years PRICE: £379.99 WEB: www.alpinestars.com TEL: 0039 0423 5286

I really rate these boots, even though they felt painfully tight and uncomfortable for the first 500 miles of usage. They come crammed with lots of safety features including a thick leather construction and armour reinforced key impact areas in the ankle, shin and outer calf areas. The fit’s much tighter than your typical boot, but the advantage is much greater feel – which is a real

bonus for racers and trackday riders. They come with a removable and washable inner bootie (so your feet don’t get all stinky), which can be custom adjusted to your shins thanks to a pull-cord. The outer boot

is fastened by a boot- long vertical zip and a ratchet retainer up the top, which gets cranked around your calf for goodmeasure. My only hangup is themain zipper can be a little tough

to get zipped to the top if placed over the outside of leathers, but the advantage of their slim nature is they fit a treat underneath most jeans. The Tech’s don’t claim to be waterproof, but I’ve been out playing in puddles plenty of

times and have never noticed wet socks. It helps that there’s an inward inclined collar at the top of the boots, which works to form a seal against your legs, keeping wind and rain from entering. This being the case, the boots are well vented and have done a good job of keeping me cool when participating in multiple six-hour endurance races. I’d take a punt that these boots have seen around 10,000 miles of action, both on road and track, but aside from a few scuffs on the changeable toe sliders, the only real sign of wear is on the grippy rubber soles of the boots from footpegs digging in. It’s not a sufficient cause for concern just yet, but I’m going to keep an eye on them.