Michelin and Northwave join forces to make cycling shoes

Northwave has just announced a partnership with those kings of rubber, Michelin. The pair have been working together on a series of mountain bike shoes that will be launched at Eurobike next month.

Michelin-soled tennis shoes from Babolat

This isn’t Michelin’s first collaboration with a shoe company and a bit of digging shows that Michelin-soled shoes are already well established in the tennis and safety boot worlds.

There are no details yet, apart from a vague press release (and an even vaguer poster, above) that talks about Michelin being brought in to co-develop “an innovative range of soles, set to improve off-road shoes’ performance while displaying a captivating and unique design.”

“Conceived for off-road bikers, the three new models coming out the partnership between Northwave and Michelin Tech Soles will be the first ever cycling shoes to employ Michelin technology, as a Worldwide exclusive, and will be launched by the Italian company during the upcoming Eurobike Expo Fair in Friedrichshafen (Germany), from 27th to 30th of August.”

We’re not sure what tread pattern or rubber durometer they’re planning on using. Or if the shoes have directional tread or not (or if the left shoe will be a different colour to the right shoe), but stay tuned for our Eurobike coverage, starting August 26th.

Something like this perhaps? A Michelin safety boot, earlier.

Chipps Chippendale

Singletrackworld's Editor At Large

With 23 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps is the longest-running mountain bike magazine editor in the world. He started in the bike trade in 1990 and became a full time mountain bike journalist at the start of 1994. Over the last 30 years as a bike writer and photographer, he has seen mountain bike culture flourish, strengthen and diversify and bike technology go from rigid steel frames to fully suspended carbon fibre (and sometimes back to rigid steel as well.)