New wetsuit and performance apparel brand ROKA is starting to make waves with an imminent roll-out of new products. ROKA is a performance multisport brand founded in 2010 by Rob Canales and Kurt Spenser, two former varsity swimming team-mates from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.
After extensive pool and race testing, ROKA believes that its Maverick wetsuit is ‘the fastest wetsuit on the planet’. With pre-orders being opened up in Spring 2013, limited quantities of the Maverick Pro wetsuit will soon be available for purchase.
Also in the ROKA product portfolio are: the Viper Speed Suit; and SIM shorts for triathlon and swim training to mimic the body position and experience of a wetsuit swim.
To give the ROKA team a broader suite of training and racing products, the brand has also partnered with some of the team’s favourite accessory brands. Further details on these new brand alliances will be unveiled soon.
As Rob and Kurt at ROKA point out, “We founded ROKA in 2010 after we signed up for an Ironman 70.3 on a dare and subsequently spent more money on gear and less time in the water than we should have. After testing the ‘best’ suits on the market, we found they all had major design flaws and performance hindering compromises – giving up some combination of body position, range of motion, rotation or buoyancy. These suits forced us to swim much harder and slower than we had expected, leaving us spent and frustrated heading into T1.”
Following their experiences, the newly formed ROKA team decided to start from scratch and create a new wetsuit design, drawing on decades of experience as competitive swimmers and the latest cutting edge research from the ‘supersuit’ era.
Over the past two years, ROKA has developed and tested its Maverick wetsuit on pro triathletes and ‘everyday tri-addict’ age groupers.
As ROKA gets ready to open up for pre-sales, it has partnered up with two sponsored athletes, with other athlete sponsorships in the pipeline. (Pro triathlete Meredith Kessler won Ironman New Zealand wearing a ROKA wetsuit and Jesse Thomas placed third at Escape From Alcatraz).
Pro triathlete Jesse Thomas has been instrumental in making sure that the suit performs for every triathlete, not just elite swimmers.
Thomas said, “Rob and Kurt were first introduced to me by a mutual friend who said, ‘These two guys are former Stanford swimmers, crazy smart, motivated, and want to make a super fast wetsuit for you.’ That email chain began what has now been a 12 month collaboration in which we’ve worked hand in hand, combining their innovations with feedback from dozens of prototypes to develop the fastest wetsuit possible.
“It’s no secret that I’m not the fastest swimmer in the race. I will never be first out of the water. So why is my collaboration with ROKA important? Because making a suit for the rest of us is different than making a suit for the bare chested swimming studs of the world.”
Thomas added, “I’m psyched to partner with ROKA because I know, without a doubt, that the Maverick is the fastest suit I’ve ever worn, that it isn’t fast just because fast swimmers use it, but because it makes me, a developing swimmer, remarkably faster.”
