PaintballX3 Magazine PaintballX3 Euro February 2012 Issue | Page 18
I�ve tried a lot of shoes in the many years
I�ve been playing paintball, all of them
with different pros and cons. I started off
as most players do with jogging-shoes be-
fore I tried the regular football shoes with
rubber spikes. That�s what was what I was
told to wear. It was not that I didn�t notice
how slippery the jogging shoes were on al-
most every surface, I just didn�t know bet-
ter. Then I used the JT paintball-shoes for
a year. The grip was great but the shoes
were heavy for me. Of course this was ear-
ly in 2000 so to be fair JT was way ahead
of the competition at that time.
I then dedicated my time to look for more
optimized footwear�from American foot-
ball shoes to golf shoes with spikes. There
were actually a lot of teams on the same
mission back then, because every compet-
itive player knew you could gain that ex-
tra inch on your opposition if you had the
right shoes. Perfect grip of the break could
be the difference between getting shot of
the break or making it safely to your bun-
ker. Then paintball fields and tournaments
started using fields with turf, and I now had
to look for two pairs of shoes. By Kristine Andersen � Slagen Bandits Norway Turf was something entirely different; where
jogging-shoes were slippery on grass they
had some grip on the turf. It was confus-
ing as hell. And it�s not like paintball was
where it is today, where everyone know the
best way to do everything, from snapshot
to slide, we had more than enough try-
and-fail things going on without worrying
about the shoes.
And since we were in on a sport which
was developed by the hour back then, ev-
eryone had an opinion on what was the
best to do. So you felt dragged in every
direction by people who just wanted what
was best for you, and you spent a lot of
money doing so. And some things haven�t
changed that much during the years � the
world�s best sport is still expensive. It still
takes every extra penny you�ve got.