文章 | Kari Voutilainen 28sport Sports Watch Phillips New York Fall 2026 Online Auction

Phillips in Association with Bacs & Russo is delighted to present The New York Sessions, Fall 2026, an online auction running from 1–9 October. Featuring more than 80 exceptional timepieces from leading makers including Patek Philippe, Rolex, A. Lange & Söhne, Audemars Piguet, and F.P. Journe, the sale includes all the lots featured in this story.

There comes a point in the development of many independent watch brands when they decide to get sporty. F.P. Journe has its lineSport. Laurent Ferrier has the Sport Auto. Romain Gauthier has the C by Romain Gauthier. Czapek has the Antarctique, while Greubel Forsey took its highly technical watchmaking into more athletic territory with the GMT Sport and its Convexe case.

Kari Voutilainen might seem a less obvious candidate. The Finnish watchmaker has built his reputation on GPHG-winning watches that draw heavily on classical watchmaking: engine-turned dials, teardrop lugs, and beautifully finished movements with oversized balance wheels.

And yet, there it is in the Voutilainen back catalogue: the 28Sport. So what, exactly, makes it sporty?

Sporting Intentions

That question is perhaps harder to answer than it first appears. After all, what makes a sports watch a sports watch?

There are some familiar answers. A steel case and integrated bracelet. A rubber strap. Good water resistance. Luminous indications. Perhaps a chronograph or another function with some practical sporting application.

Then there are the associations built around the watch: motor racing, sailing, tennis, golf, or an athlete wearing it while doing something considerably more strenuous than attending a watch auction.

Independent watchmakers have approached the category in their own ways. Journe’s lineSport introduced lightweight cases and bracelets in aluminum before moving into titanium. Laurent Ferrier gave the Sport Auto an integrated metal bracelet and a case inspired, in part, by the watchmaker's own motor-racing past. Voutilainen's answer was rather different.

Eight in Steel

Introduced in 2020, the original 28Sport was offered in two limited series of eight pieces, one in Grade 5 titanium and the other in stainless steel, both measuring 39mm.

The example offered in The New York Sessions, Fall 2026, is No. 5 of the eight stainless-steel watches. Rather than radically changing his established formula, Voutilainen concentrated much of the sporting character on the dial.

Its black onyx center and matching small seconds are surrounded by a navy engine-turned hour track. Bright orange indexes punctuate the display, while white Super-LumiNova provides the sort of low-light legibility more readily associated with a sports watch.

The effect is striking, but there is still no mistaking whose watch it is. Guilloché remains prominent. So do the small seconds display and Voutilainen’s distinctive Breguet-style hands, here with lume-filled tips. And rather than an integrated bracelet or rubber strap, this particular example comes on a casual, hand-stitched textile strap with a leather lining and contrasting orange stitching.

Business as Usual

However, when you turn the watch over, the idea of the Rovaniemi native suddenly deciding to make a conventional sports watch becomes even harder to sustain.

Inside is the manually wound Calibre 28, with the large balance that has become one of the visual signatures of Voutilainen’s movement architecture. It uses a Phillips overcoil with a Grossmann interior curve, while two escape wheels provide direct impulse to it.

And then there is the finishing. The bridges retain the sort of hand decoration you would expect from Voutilainen rather than adopting a more utilitarian or sober treatment simply because “Sport” has appeared on the dial.

That may be the most interesting thing about the 28Sport. Voutilainen did not throw away his usual vocabulary and start again; he just took an existing one and loosened his tie.

The Man Himself

Perhaps we have been looking for sport in the wrong places anyway.

Voutilainen was born and grew up in Finland, and has long been based in the Val-de-Travers, an area where downhill and cross-country skiing are very much part of life. In 2021, he posted a photo on social media of himself on skis and surrounded by snow, wearing a blue jacket bearing a Finnish flag. His caption consisted of just two words: “Winter sports.”

There is something brilliantly matter-of-fact about it. No racing driver, tennis player, or professional golfer was required to establish a sporting connection. Here was the watchmaker himself, out in the snow with his poles.

Nor does the 28Sport appear to have been an exercise that Voutilainen left behind once the watches went to clients. When he visited New York in 2023, he was photographed wearing his own pièce unique version of the 28Sport, made in tantalum.

His Kind of Sport

Perhaps that is all the definition we need. The 28Sport has lume, stronger colors, and a more casual character than many of Voutilainen’s watches. But it still has guilloché, onyx, and a manually wound in-house movement of considerable sophistication.

In other words, Voutilainen has not tried especially hard to make the 28Sport conform to somebody else's idea of what a sports watch ought to be.

Part of the appeal of independent watchmaking is that its practitioners have the freedom to decide these things for themselves. For Kari Voutilainen, making a sports watch did not mean changing the way he makes watches. After all, when your name is on the dial, you also get to decide what “Sport” means.

You can learn more, place a bid, and view the entire New York Sessions, Fall 2026, catalog here.