PHAT-METERS.

• Author: Peterson, Eric

Longmont-based PhatRat's PhatAir threatens to revolutionize skiing

Sports fans gobble up statistics. Baseball has RBI and ERA. Football has passing yardage, rushing yardage and quarterback ratings. But freestyle skiing has always been more difficult to quantify. Enter Longmont's PhatRat Technology Inc., which replaces guesstimates with tech-measured data for sports including skiing, snowboarding and skateboarding.

After watching a 1994 basketball game, PhatRat co-founder and CEO curtis Vock created -- over beers at a Boston pub -- the concept of measuring athletic performance through technology.

The technology itself is fairly simple, Vock said. The PhatAir, or Smart Sensor, which measures hang time, is a half-credit-card-size unit attached to the bottom of a snowboard, skateboard or ski. The unit monitors, quantifies and scores activity including speed, airtime, power, G-force and drop distance. It then sends it wirelessly to a central processing unit. The CPU reports data on time in the air, speed, Gs and more to a data receiving unit that looks like a fancy wristwatch -- and provides many of the same features.

The company installs the equipment at the sports venue and trains employees to use it. Another service entails using strategically placed antennae on the slopes, allowing the results to be monitored and televised.

In 1997, Vock, an intellectual property lawyer and "collector of degrees" (including an MBA and degrees in engineering and law) obtained a patent for PhatAir technology that measures a skier's or snowboarder's speed and hang time. Products that measure impact and height have patents pending.

PhatRat didn't incorporate until last year. "It just...