Game Changer

Richard Mille’s RM 07-04 Automatic Sport is another example of a watchmaker that always delivers a peak performance

The release of the RM 07-04 is a timely reminder of how Richard Mille’s appreciation of sport runs deep, indulging a broad and often personal passion for its myriad forms — from motor racing and tennis through to free diving and golf — but also highlighting an innate understanding of what it takes to reach the pinnacle of performance. To achieve the impossible.

It’s an understanding and drive for perfection that’s manifest in a range of Richard Mille sports watches which shatter all pre-conceived ideas of what a sports watch should and can do — let alone what it should look like — each painstakingly produced to meet the unique demands of individual athletes and the sports in which they excel. Take, for example, the RM 027 Tourbillon, the first in a series of watches precision engineered for arguably the world’s greatest ever tennis player, Rafa Nadal, to wear during matches and therefore able to meet the rigorous demands of championship-level competition, including the shock that reverberates through the wrist from a scorching forehand stroke, which, in Nadal’s case, routinely tops 120km/h. After years of development and testing, Richard Mille’s solution was at the time the world’s lightest watch, a remarkable feat given its critical need for durability.

The Masters-winning golfer Bubba Watson can generate speeds of up to 312 km/h with his swing, the complex dynamics of which — including the impact from striking the ball — were picked apart by Richard Mille’s engineers and the solutions reassembled in a series of highly complex tourbillons for the American to wear on tour. Similarly, Olympic skiing star Alexis Pinturault required a timepiece with the ability to excel in both extreme temperatures and at high altitude, while being lightweight and durable to the ergonomic demands of slaloming down slopes.

What’s evident is that the bigger the challenge a sport’s physical and mechanical constraints provides, the higher Richard Mille rises to meet it.

Now, all that Richard Mille has learnt from operating at the cutting edge of ultra-high level watchmaking and elite athletic performance, pushing boundaries, shattering convention, has been applied to the new RM 07-04 Automatic Sport, the brand’s first women’s sports watch.

Richard Mille has long championed women in sport, launching motorsport’s first ever all-female racing team in 2020, and for this debut timepiece the brand shines a spotlight on six inspiring sportswomen: racing drivers

Aurora Straus and Margot Laffite; golfer Nelly Korda; track and field stars Nafi Thiam and Yuliya Levchenko; and three time Olympic gold medalwinning snowboarder Ester Ledecká.

Various sports, multiple requirements, one watch to suit all — such are the challenges when you work at Richard Mille. “Nafi Thiam, Ester Ledecká and Yuliya Levchenko, needed a lighter piece, whereas Nelly Korda, Aurora Straus and Margot Laffite were looking for a more versatile watch,” revealed Amanda Mille, Brand and Partnerships Director. Upping the ante, Richard Mille’s technical team made the design challenge threefold: “Extreme skeletonisation, integration of the case with the movement, and inclusion of an inverted function selector,” outlined Salvador Arbona, the brand’s Technical Director For Movements.

The resulting, remarkable timepiece –which utilises materials such as Quartz TPT® and Carbon TPT® for the case, and weighs in at just 36 grams, strap included, while still able to guarantee shock resistance at 5000g’s – took a full three years to develop and comes in six colour-coded styles. Black for the Carbon TPT® model, and creamy white, mauve, salmon, green and dark blue for the five Quartz TPT® models.

“Offering a women’s skeleton sports watch is a gamble that few have dared to take,” said Cécile Guenat, Richard Mille’s Creative and Development Director. But then there is no watchmaker quite as daring as Richard Mille. A brand that competes only with itself at the summit of the watch game.