This website has been created by Peter White and includes information supplied John Gorman, who developed the KPS Cant Gauge. We are both active and experienced skiers, but not professionals.

Peter White


I am a retired airline pilot

I was born in 1946 and am a retired airline pilot. I also used to race cars and worked for many years as a race engineer, designer,  and finally a race-driving instructor. This background has made me sensitive to the role equipment plays in a sport like skiing, whereas many athletes focus only on their own physical performance. I started skiing rather late at thirty, but at least this means that  I can clearly remember my own struggles to learn the basics. These days I am a dedicated skier and spend every winter season living and skiing in the Chamonix valley.

My children, Duncan, Erica and Jean, grew up skiing and raced successfully, representing the UK Internationally as children, going on to become members of the Scottish Alpine Team, and  then the British Development Team . They are all qualified Alpine Performance Coaches. It was a unique situation to have three members of the same family on these elite squads at the same time and I learnt a lot about skiing from their technical development.

Interestingly, my daughters, like my wife and I, need quite a lot of boot canting to get into alignment. My son needs virtually no cuff canting at all and is over-canted in many race boots. It is Duncan in the photo below.

I have been interested in the alignment of ski-boots ever since reading Warren Witherell’s wonderful books many years ago. Discovering John Gorman’s KPS Gauge during the 2011 season re-awakened my curiosity and enthusiasm for this subtle but essential element of the sport. I decided to try to popularise the whole issue by creating this website. It is purely for the amusement and possible education of skiers in general.

But the website has the ambition to convince you to take control of your own boot alignment issues or, if you are a coach or instructor, to make sure your students and racers have correctly adjusted boots. This is the missing element for many skiers.


John  Gorman

I am a semi-retired engineer and chiropractor and an enthusiastic skier since the age of 21 (in 1965). I have been a representative and party leader for the Ski Club of Great Britain since 1972 and led the advanced off-piste parties for several years around 1985.

I qualified with the British Association of Ski Instructors (BASI) in 1979. (First level- now called BASI 1, I think)

I developed my own ideas on canting in about 1974 and have manufactured and sold the KPS gauge since the early 1980’s. I have always had to adjust any boots I buy.  My wife and daughter need no adjustment but my son has needed to correct by about the same 3 degrees as myself. On his most recent boots we took the gauge along to the shop and selected boots needing the minimum correction. (About one piece of underfelt as shimming on one boot cuff plus the maximum adjustment of the boot hinge.)

This is Ben aged about 16. Nice parallel lower legs though he has not done a lot of skiing.

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The Boot Problem How to Fix Your Boots

By Peter White


This website is in the process of being comprehensively re-written, modified, and generally face-lifted. The process began in the last week of February 2017 and will continue into late March. Please come back periodically to check out the new material as it is added. Feedback welcome.

This is not a commercial website but I welcome feedback and will respond to questions as soon as I have the time.
I discovered the elements of cant adjustment by reading the late Warren Witherell’s classic work “The Athletic Skier”. Being on the fringes of ski racing I discussed this issue with many coaches (mostly Austrian) and eventually corrected my own boots by trial and error.
When I discovered John Gorman’s beautifully elegant analysis of lateral alignment and his equally simple and highly functional ‘KPS Gauge’ I decided that it might benefit many skiers if I made this information public on this website.

Contact addresses:

 Peter White     (website author)      peterwhite17@hotmail.com

          John Gorman   (who developed the KPS concept and gauge)      
please use contact link via his website

www.lower-back-pain.info/contacts.html


John's website