SMP Strike Saddle Review

Anyone who rides their bike for extended periods of time will agree that the saddle is one of your most important things on the bike. Get the wrong one and riding is just agony. Get the right one and you can ride all day. I believe I have found that dream saddle. The SMP Strike.

This is one crazy looking piece of gear that most people will notice and usually comment on. The beak shaped nose and the massive channel down the middle make this a distinctive looking lump of carbon and leather.

SMP state on the their web site that the "nose was designed to supply a flat base for efforts when sitting for long climbs that have to be faced and as a help to downhill slopes, offering greater thigh control". You just have to ride this saddle to know that this isnt marketing speak and this dipped nose is a godsend. No longer are your man parts crushed up into you chest, but they can just hang free over the edge and bounce around to their hearts content.

The channel down the middle is so big that you could fit your hand down it. Apparently this "prevents crushing of the anus (anyone know what thats like?), prostate, venae pudenae, deep dorsal veins and penis artery, scrotum and testicles, and the labia majora, and minora and the clitoris in women." Clearly none of us want this to happen to us, and I say if a saddle can stop all this then I am sold.

SMP say that this saddle has been designed from the ground up with detailed analysis of cycling movement, both in racing and general riding. The seating position is shared between the buttocks and the pelvic bone which makes for a very comfortable ride position. It seems to me that they have got this spot on as the ride fealing sure lives up to this promise.

Visually the saddle is a great looking thing with good length bars to enable easy installation on practically any combination of frame/saddle pillar. The saddle comes in a range of models from the fully padded commuter to the full carbon. We currently use the SMP Stryke Evolution on my race bike, a and the SMP Stryke Composit on my training bike. The Composit is carbon shell with leather cover, whereas the Evolution is similar with a 5mm foam layer. The difference is noticable but neither is more or less comfortable than the other. They are just easy on the butt in general.

While the team from RoadCycling were attending the Wattyl Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge a few weeks back we were approached by the distributor of SMP in the domain for a bit of a chat about this product. http://www.italiatech.co.nz/ is the company bringing these into New Zealand and Australia, so hopefully you will be seeing more available on the shelves of your local bike shop soon.

All I hope is that I don't see too many of the full carbon saddles when I walk past my LBS every day. These are so attractive that I just might have to get one eventually.