It’s easier to understand Greubel Forsey watches if we borrow the label “wizardry”. Because beyond dressing its watches in artisan craft, Greubel Forsey watches are also imbued with radical rethinking of the very fundamentals of better watchmaking, plainly visible from the line of watches and inventions that have rolled out its workshop. Different approaches to intuitive, efficient time display, tourbillons spinning optimally at speed and angle unique from the rest of the industry, and securing the transmission of watchmaking know-how to new generations of watchmakers — Greubel Forsey has inked its place among foremost watchmakers with creativity, ingenuity and vision.

It was only a matter of time before the duo of Robert Greubel and Stephen Forsey turned their attention to sports watches. Something ruggedly simple and outstanding with market-making price is a formula some watchmaking greats have chosen recently with good reason. But Greubel Forsey’s gone the other way with the GMT Sport. With a little irony, it has stuck unwavering to its original course, to make a sports watch like no other.

Water resistance of 100 meters in an ultra light and tough titanium case, as well as lume-tipped hands and markers are sports watch essentials that have found their place on the GMT Sport. From there, Greubel Forsey goes swinging by assembling and reworking earlier inventions into a unique case shape in gorgeous 3D.

From the top, the case is a circle, yet when angled, it is an ovoid shape – not unlike how a rubber band flexes when raised on two points along its circumference. Local time hands, curved to follow the profile of the case, are mounted on an arching center bridge with black finished openings. At ‘2’, Greubel Forsey’s trademark 24 seconds tourbillon dominates, spinning faster than convention to preserve chronometry, while inclined at an optimal 25º to duplicate the effect of multiple tourbillons spinning on multiple axes. The tourbillon cage comprises 88 components, for a weight of 0.38 grams, courtesy of light alloy pillars and titanium bridges.

The second time zone display and running seconds are integrated together at ‘10’ while the worldtimer globe at ‘8’ with day/night hours ring rotates once every 24 hours to give a most intuitive reading of the hour in every time zone, at a glance. This worldtime display is completed on the caseback with UTC Universal and Summer Time read off a cities ring.

Bolstering the sporty aesthetic are the rubber-mounted titanium crown and we can’t help but notice the two pushers on the left side of the case – for setting the second time zone and synching local time to the globe, respectively – look like a pair of trapezoid tailpipes ripped from a sports car. Fast-car symbology to match a speedy tourbillon.

The GMT Sport in titanium case is available in a limited edition of 11 pieces, at CHF 480,000.