Breitling has announced a new addition to its Endurance Pro range. The latest IRONMAN® edition celebrates the triathlon World Championships to be held in Taupō, New Zealand, between December 14th and 15th. 

It is, as we’ve come to expect from Breitling’s Endurance Pro range, a lightweight, sporty, and extremely colorful watch with some lovely details that set it apart from the core models.

A partnership between Breitling and the IRONMAN race

This 300-piece limited edition honors a logical partnership between Breitling and IRONMAN® that has been running since 2021. While 44mm wide, the watch remains comfortable during extreme activity thanks to the Breitlight® case material. A scratch-resistant, thermally stable, hypoallergenic polymer composite, reinforced with carbon fibers, Breitlight® is 3.3 times lighter than titanium and 5.8 times lighter than stainless steel. Despite its weight, the case is still water resistant to 100 meters and perfectly suited to life on the wrist of the world’s finest endurance athletes. 

The black of the Breitlight® case is juxtaposed by a bright red colorway, accented by a fresh orange. It is a pleasing, too-seldom-seen color combination that works particularly well on a sports watch. At six o’clock, the dial sports the race’s unique IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship Taupō logo. This logo, which is a play on the regular “I M” logo of the series is inspired by the Māori concept of tuituia, which expresses the spirit of unity, and represents the bond shared by such high-level competitors that, while adversaries during competition, have a deep and mutual understanding of the dedication and sacrifice it takes to reach such a standard.

Additionally, the hands and indices of the Breitling Endurance Pro IRONMAN® 2024 70.3 World Championship Taupō limited edition are coated in luminescent Super-LumiNova®. The red chapter ring encircling the dial is printed with a scale for measuring pulse rate; the bidirectional bezel features a solar compass (a welcome and relevant departure from the thoughtlessly applied tachymeter scales we see gracing many chronographs).

A quartz watch that makes sense for high-performance athletics

While many watch aficionados balk at non-mechanical movements, I couldn’t be happier to see a major Swiss brand dedicating time and money to create a line of exclusively quartz watches that wouldn’t make sense to power in any other way. For a long time now, I’ve thought there are far too few luxury quartz watches (for men, especially) on the market today. I’ve championed to anyone who might listen that we’re due a second quartz revolution and that this time, the word crisis need not be applied. Perhaps celebration would be a better word to employ. 

The supercilious sneering directed toward quartz-regulated timepieces is maddening. While it doesn’t represent the same types of skills traditional mechanical watchmaking extols, it is just as fascinating for its own genius. While it is truly incredible humans were able to wrest natural materials into highly refined trackers of time, powered by hand-wound springs and, later, the movement of their wearers’ wrists, even countenancing the glorious fluke that a slither of properly cut and finished quartz could vibrate at 32,768 Hz — a number suitable for keeping time (I’ll explain how that works momentarily) — is almost unbelievable.

Perhaps a deeper dive into why quartz is so incredible (and is not, as many seem to believe, some kind of witchcraft tantamount to “cheating”) would help sway the opinions of the undecided.

32,768 vibrations per second may seem, on the surface, a number that has little to do with the 60 seconds of every minute, the 60 minutes of every hour, or the 24 hours of every day, a simple calculation anyone can perform reveals the incredible provenance of this number.

Every second, these 32,768 vibrations are passed through an integrated circuit that “flip flops” the number of vibrations back and forth, reducing it by 50% every time. Fifteen alternations later, the number remaining is one (1). It is that impulse that is used to advance the seconds hand by a single step. If that is hard to visualize, here’s what the arithmetic looks like in numerical terms:

32,768/2=16,384. 16,384/2=8,192. 8,192/2=4,096. 4,096/2=2,048. 2,048/2=1,024. 1,024/2=512. 512/2=256. 256/2=128. 128/2=64. 64/2=32. 32/2=16. 16/2=8. 8/2=4. 4/2=2. 2/2=1. 

This calculation is performed by the ETA-supplied COSC-certified Caliber 82 for Breitling. In addition to being able to tell the time, this SuperQuartz chronograph can also measure time down to 1/10th of a second.

Ultimately, while quartz-regulated, non-metal-cased watches may not be the standard fare of luxury watchmaking, there is, in my mind, clearly a place for these highly functionally, technically astounding timepieces. And, when it comes to world-class sporting competition, the fit couldn’t be any better. Here’s hoping this partnership continues, and Breitling forges ahead with its mission to elevate the opinion of quartz watches industry-wide. 

Tech Specs: Breitling Endurance Pro IRONMAN 2024 70.3 WC

Movement: Breitling quartz Caliber 82; two-year battery life
Functions: Hours and minutes; chronograph; pulsometer; date
Case: 44mm × 12.5mm; Breitlight®; 100m water-resistance
Dial: Dark anthracite
Strap: Red IRONMAN rubber strap
Price: USD 3,600
Availability: Limited to 300 pieces