Health and fitness enthusiasts take note: watchmakers have you covered! Whichever activity you choose to keep mind and body in great shape, there is a timepiece for you. Watches and Wonders Geneva 2025 unleashed a slew of models for every situation, including when the going gets tough. Last year’s salon was dominated by dress watches, of the kind that favour a classical design and smaller diameters, and it would have been fair to expect more of the same this year.

As it turned out, there was less a wave and more a trickle of dress watches for 2025. Cartier revived its Tank LC and returned to its Tank à Guichets from 1928, offering versions in platinum, rose gold and yellow gold. H. Moser & Cie. continues to delight with its fumé enamel dials with a hammered texture and rolled out the Endeavour Centre Seconds Concept Purple Enamel with displays of hours, minutes and seconds. Speake Marin, Laurent Ferrier and Vacheron Constantin also obliged with understated, quietly elegant designs, but brands that tapped into this register were far from legion.

Nonetheless, retro vibes are rarely top of the list for adrenalin-seekers, who have other priorities. For a watch to stay the distance it must be robust, resistant, reliable and precise. Here, too, brands have risen to the occasion. If you’re in the market for a hard-wearing chrono, look no further than Baume & Mercier’s latest Riviera models, or Grand Seiko’s Tokyo Lion Tentagraph, not to mention Bremont and its Altitude range or Eberhard’s new Contodate. If it’s a dive watch you need, Panerai has upped the water-resistance of its Luminor Marina to 50 bar (500 metres), while Montblanc has expanded its Iced Sea Automatic Date 0 Oxygen collection. As for the Diver [Air] from Ulysse Nardin, at 52g strap included, it is nothing less than the lightest dive watch in the world. Still not enough? Time to bring out the big guns! IWC as well as Parmigiani Fleurier have each developed their own titanium/ceramic alloy: Ceratanium for the former and the new Ultra- Cermet for the latter. The IWC Big Pilot’s Watch Shock Absorber Tourbillon Skeleton XPL, built to withstand accelerations in excess of 10,000g, and the Parmigiani Tonda PF Sport Chronograph, will take any number of hits and still come back for more. 

When not dangling from a cliff, sports watches show that they can also take a stylish turn, in particular skeleton models, as demonstrated by Bell & Ross with its BR-03 Skeleton, Norqain and its Independance Skeleton Chrono 42, or Louis Moinet with its Time to Race and Impulsion Titanium Onyx. Fancy something different? From HYT and the fluidic display of its S1 Ti Sport to Ressence and the orbital display of its Type 7 or U-Boat and the oil immersion system of the U-65, the choice is yours. Something in ceramic? Take a look at Hublot’s Big Bang, which turns 20 this year, or head over to Zenith which marks its 160th anniversary with a trio of ceramic chronographs. Not forgetting the midnight blue ceramic of Chanel’s latest J12.
 

Should you intend to toast your sporting achievements by raising a glass, you can feel confident that Patek Philippe’s Calatrava 8-Day, Rolex’s brand-new Land-Dweller or Chopard’s Alpine Eagle XP CS in platinum will lend a rebellious note to a champagne reception. And confidence is one quality that every sports watch should inspire.