Selle Italia

SLR Team Edition Flow Saddle

Filling a vacant spot in Selle Italia's lineup, the SLR Team Edition Flow Saddle finds a home neatly situated between Selle's lightweight Carbonio line and regular SLR models, offering a bit more cushion and forgiveness than its carbon brothers, and a little less weight than the standard SLR line. The SLR Team designation means that the saddle uses the same shape as the Carbonio line to equip you with a streamlined fit, but packs in a touch of extra cushion for the long haul. Its topped with grippy Fibra-Tek that keeps you slip-free when you plant your sit bones, and a strip of glossy flair down the center that both boosts style and offers a a slick strip for easy transitions when you're moving fore and aft on the saddle.

The saddle's shell is a 70/30 blend of nylon composite and carbon fiber, which strikes a balance between weight, pliability, stiff responsiveness, and damping that makes the SLR a standard in the peloton, and gives it enough pliability and flexibility to "hammock" appropriately for comfort, while taking some shock and vibration out of the road without turning the shell into a trampoline. The shell features the same 131mm width and 275mm length as other SLRs, making it an ideal platform for those with average-width sit bones. Compared to the base SLR Flow model, the less-pronounced cutout means that platform confers support to more positions while you cycle through the miles while still maintaining a protective void to relieve pressure on the perineum.

The padding on the platform itself is a bit more generous than on the lighter SLR models, but not as supple as that on the Flite or SLS series. In a concession to the extra padding weight, the previous Vanox alloy rails have been replaced by Selle Italia's TI 316 alloy rails, which complement the carbon-reinforced shell to bring the claimed weight down to a respectable 170g — 25g lighter than the SLR Super Flow, despite the latter's extremely large cutout.