Speed skiing is the fastest non-motorised sport on earth, and Simon Billy is the fastest man ever to do it — the Frenchman’s world-record run at Vars clocked more than 255 kilometres per hour, a figure most sports cars would decline to attempt on ice. Bell & Ross, which has long kept one foot in the cockpit, now plants the other on the piste: the BR-05 Chrono Snow Rocket is a 250-piece tribute to its record-holding ambassador.
The square-cased BR-05 Chrono, 42mm in satin-polished steel, arrives dressed for the mountain. The dial is matte white, crossed by oversized red numerals, and the hour and minute hands are shaped — in a detail that will delight some and scandalise others — like a pair of miniature red skis. The date has migrated to six o’clock to keep the composition symmetrical, and the red-and-white livery carries through to the chronograph registers and the rubber strap.
Inside beats the BR-CAL.326, an automatic chronograph built on the Sellita SW510 base, good for 60 hours of reserve and water-resistant to 100 metres — rated for the après, in other words, as well as the descent.
The Snow Rocket is limited to 250 pieces, priced at €6,900 on the red rubber strap or €7,400 on the integrated steel bracelet. As the Gulf’s winter season begins and its residents scatter toward Courchevel, Zermatt and Gstaad, a chronograph with skis for hands may be the most honest expression yet of the region’s relationship with snow: brief, fast and entirely first-class.
