The Black Ops range is Rossignol's big focus this season, and every model we tested has hugely impressed. The Sender Ti is the flagship of the range, but the Black Ops Sender comes in £65 cheaper, without titanal beam and significantly lighter.
This model also retains the 'air tip' construction (the honeycombed nose) so beloved of the Soul 7 and similar Rossi skis.
These construction elements (plus the price) arguably make the Sender more accessible than the Ti version, and although both skis would be worthy of the Freeride Ski of the Year, this one edges it.
The Sender is predictably a touch more poppy than it's stiffer Ti brother, but it's also more forgiving, a little smoother in cruddy snow and a bit more fun. The air tip helps in making it super manoeuvrable and lively, while the 'Line Control Technology' adds torsional stiffness making it more playful and responsive to varying pressure on the edges.
All this adds up to an incredibly confidence inspiring ski; it wants you to lay out big open turns, and while it can string together tight turns with no problem, it seems to urge you to ski faster!
This ski and its Ti sibling compliment each other perfectly and either could be category winners, but the Black Ops Sender just takes the crown with a couple of clever tweaks which make a near-perfect freeride ski accessible to mere mortals.
