Saddle Made of Ostrich

These look pretty freaking awesome! I wonder if they will be as nice as a Brooks?

@Jesse

They are awesome, best saddle I have ever ridden.

My wife and I both use and love them…I’ve never owned a Brooks but I’m pretty sure they are significantly different. Between my wife and I, there are three Titanico’s in the house and we bought one for my bro-in-law for his touring bike. The leather feels pretty soft on the bum right from the start. Feels like a leather hammock. The split design definitely “sticks” to your butt better, which is to say that you can definitely tell the saddle moves with you throughout the pedal stroke. This also means less chaffing. My wife switched to this saddle in the middle of the season. She was immediately comfortable on it and liked it much better than the SI Prolink w/gel and cutout.

The saddle has a couple of concerns…after it breaks in, the leather does stretch out quite a bit. We do not have the Ostrich models…just the Waterproof Watershed models. We’ve had to tighten the adjustment bolt on our saddles. I spoke with Tom from Selle Anatomica and he said this is normal breaking in procedures. The length of the bolt easily accomodates this.

One of my saddles developed an annoying amount of squeeking where the leather meets the front leather/bolt bracket. I was so annoyed with it that I took the saddle off for awhile…but then put it back on and just dealt with the squeeking because the saddle is so comfortable.

This same saddle also had delamination issues. If you flip the saddle over, you’ll see that the saddle actually has another layer of leather glued onto the bottom side. It is thicker for the “clydesdale” models that we have, which are for people over 175 lbs (I’d recommend that you get the clydesdale model even if you’re below 175lbs). I told Tom about this at his booth at NAHBS and he told me to send it in and they’ll replace it. I sent it in and got a new replacement saddle in the mail 6 days later.

For those who are switching to this saddle, it should be noted that the rails are pretty long, but the “sweet spot” on the saddle is much more forward than most saddles. You don’t want to be sitting too far back or you’ll be resting on the rear leather bracket, which have no give. For those who are using a zero offset seatpost, this might require going to a 2cm setback seatpost, unless you already had your old saddle slammed all the way forward already. If you have your old saddle slammed all the way back on a 2cm setback seatpost, you’ll have to get a seatpost with more setback.

FWIW, I continue to use the Fizik Vitesse and my wife uses the Selle Italia Prolink Transam Gel on any of our city bikes, but have the Titanico on our century bikes. We’ve found that the Titanico doesn’t feel super for around town riding because you can really feel the edges on the cutout if you don’t have padded cycling shorts on.

Overall, I’d say this is a great saddle for anyone looking for something wider than racing saddles in the 130mm width range. My wife and I both pretty tall and we prefer saddles in the 140-150mm width range. It’s great for recreational all-day riding. Since it probably weighs 3/4 lb more than any racing saddle on the market, I would guess the racers won’t be looking for a Selle Anatomica sponsorship anytime soon.

Tai