There’s plenty of similar shapes on the market, Rome aren’t pretending otherwise, but the unique Free The Ride Camber and Directional Diamond 3D nose helps to give the Stale Fish the edge… and the float, and the forgiveness and the versatility, come to think about it.

First up, you have a pretty solid dose of camber underneath the back foot and that not only helps with getting performance on the piste but provides some much-needed pop, stability and power transfer at the back end for a snowboard with a shorter tail, like this one.

“It’s channelling everything that makes Stale one of the most infectious riders to watch in a freeride deck primed to help us recreate some of that magic ourselves”

Up front is where the magic happens. Around the front inserts, the camber begins to flatten before shifting into a long, progressive rocker in the nose. That in itself would provide pretty decent float, but the 3D profiling at the ends, which significantly uplifts large sections of the side base, creates a profile that displaces snow as soon as it comes into contact with it and keeps the tip blasting up above the surface, no matter how deep it gets.

In the core, Rome have used a lightweight bledn of poplar and paulownia stringers and a combination of medium and stiffer flexing fibreglass laminates. More excitingly, though, they’ve also added a Bamboo Omega HotRod into the centre of the nose. New for this season, the bamboo rod is wrapped in a carbon housing to deliver impressive dampening and keep the front of the board powerful and responsive for precise turn initiation and high-speed stability. A common drawback of directional volume shifted snowboard is their handling at higher speed and choppy conditions. This little innovation takes care of both drawbacks.

Will we see Stale win X-games slopestyle on this thing? Unlikely. Will we see some air-punching, stoke inducing Gimbal God follow-cam edits of Stale charging on the fish this season? Man, we hope so. This isn’t a snowboard defined by world firsts and medal-winning moments. Instead, it’s channelling everything that makes Stale one of the most infectious riders to watch – both on and off the circuit – in a freeride deck primed to help us recreate some of that magic ourselves.