History of Race Place & BEAST Tuning

Race Place and BEAST Tuning Tools began in 1995. Our founder, Scott Holmer, was a manufacturer's rep in the ski industry and owned The Lift Ski Shop. He also had three kids, Cami, Eric and Kelsey, who excelled at ski racing with honors at local and national levels.

Traveling to many race venues brought Scott into contact with parents, coaches and race techs using various ski tuning tools and techniques, which seemed rather primitive. Having an inventive mind, Scott began thinking about how to design more accurate tools while driving the long roads home from ski races.

Back in August 1994, Scott found himself at Mt. Hood, watching the US Ski Team Techs fine-tune their athlete's skis and setting base edge bevels by wrapping tape around a file. Ever the curious type, Scott couldn't help but ask what degree bevel they were setting. The techs told him it was 0.5°. Intrigued, Scott asked how many wraps of tape it took to achieve that angle, and they replied, "Just one."

Naturally, Scott's next question was about how far they held the tape from the ski edge. The techs, however, weren't too eager to share that detail. Sensing a gap in their precision, Scott pointed out that accuracy could be an issue unless the tape was always held at the same distance from the edge. The tech replied with a knowing smile, saying that proper tuning was an art form one had to master. Scott, never one to miss a beat, quipped, "Even good artists have bad days," and then headed back to his shop in Bend.

Months later, while driving his kids home from a ski race, the idea of the Base Beast came to mind. The next day he cut and glued pieces of wood together and shaped pieces of metal that screwed onto the wood frame. This basic design held the metal elevation strip, which sets the angle at a constant distance from the ski edge to solve the accuracy issue, and the original Base BEAST was born!!

The name BEAST is an acronym for Best Edge Accuracy Ski Tool, and the Base BEAST is the most sold base edge bevel guide in the world, with over 50,000 sold since 1995. Other BEAST products developed since that time are Side of BEAST, Pocket BEAST, Plane BEAST, True BEAST, Jaws of the BEAST, Bench of the BEAST and BEAST Wax.

Race Place began that fall as a mail-order catalog before having an online presence in 1997. Each fall, the Race Place Catalog is mailed to over 35,000 ski racers. A relatively recent feature of the catalog is the cover athlete contest. The athlete winning the front cover spot is awarded $3,000 of merchandise, and the back cover athlete is awarded $1,500.

Race Place has become the largest supplier of alpine race gear in North America. They offer an extensive in-stock product line, very knowledgeable staff and a philosophy of shipping orders the day they are received!