Did you hear?… Horizon, Keys, Numetrex top 5 in Sports Product of the Year

After two months of competition and thousands of votes, the field of 30 competitors has been whittled to five finalists — three fitness products — in the ninth-annual SGMA Sports Product of the Year Awards. Those three finalists are: Horizon Fitness, WT 950 Wireless Pedometer Treadmill; Textronics, Numetrex Sports Bra; and Keys Fitness, centerG Elliptical. The other two are:Â Spalding’s Never Flat Basketball and Sportsstuff’s Wego Kite Tube.

Horizon’s WT 950 treadmill interacts with a wireless pedometer to track a user’s daily walking distance both on the treadmill and off (click here to see a Feb. 8, 2006, SNEWS® story, “Spending a day with the wireless pedometer treadmill by Horizon”). Textronics’ Numetrex traditional sports bra has heart-rate monitor technology built into the fabric (click here to see the March 27, 2006, SNEWS® review). Keys’ centerG elliptical trainer with 21-inch stride length is the smallest frame size in its class (click here to see our September 2005 story noting it as one of the innovative introductions at the 2005 Health & Fitness Business show.)

The products were featured at the recent Super Show in Orlando, Fla. Organized by Sports Edge magazine, the Sports Product of the Year winner will be named in late April after consumer and trade media across the country cast their votes.

Previous winners include: 1998 – The Radar Ball, Rawlings; 1999 – The Stroke Coach, The Stroke Coach Co.; 2000 – Twilight Basketball, Huffy Sports; 2001 – Chameleon Gym, Chameleon Fitness Systems; 2002 – Trailskate, GateSkate; 2003 – Canopy Trike, Huffy Bicycle Co. and Quik Change Dumbbell System, Hoist Fitness Systems; 2004 – The Napali, Clear Blue Hawaii; and 2005 – Landroller, Landroller Inc.