De Soto Now Makes Seat Pads for Tri Saddles

February 26, 2024

If you’re a Reader Forum denizen you may’ve noticed a discussion about De Soto seat pads. These aren’t the old pads from 10 or 20 years ago made for road saddles. These are entirely new patterns made for today’s tri saddles.

A little digression if I may. How dumb am I? Let me tell you exactly how dumb. Back in another life I frantically built a factory full of sewing and cutting machines, gluing tables, and hired and trained a bunch of people to build a wetsuit for a triathlon, and did it all in 6 months, with no background or knowledge in how to do it. That was in 1987 and that was a frantic year. Come October of 1987 the thought hit me: This is a cyclical business. I’m going to have an off season. Yes, it’s true. I didn’t realize mine was a seasonal business until the season was over. That’s how dumb I was.

Dumb, but resourceful! I had rubber, a staff and a factory. What could I build? We settled on a couple of products: half shoe covers for winter riding, and seat pads. There was no such thing as a tri saddle because aerobars had come out the same year as that wetsuit of mine, so we all rode standard road saddles, in Speedo briefs, in the aero position. (And walked to school 6 miles each way barefoot through the snow.)

As time passed, and as I passed into a new line of work, the dominant stateside factory for tri wetsuits became De Soto’s factory in San Diego, and you can still buy his half-shoe covers (and I did, and I wear them in the winter). De Soto made seat pads as well, but they were just like those we used to make: for road saddles. (In fact, as you know if you read what I write, I hate almost all current road saddles, and it just dawned on me as I’m writing this that a seat pad for these terrible new road saddles might be the cure.)

What nobody thought to do was make a seat pad for tri saddles after the split-nose craze took off a decade and more ago. But as more saddles are showing up on the market for triathletes, that triathletes are buying and riding, the style of tri saddle can range from ISM split nose to Gebiomized Stride, Syncros Belcarra, Selle Italia Watt, Specialized Sitero, Bontrager Hilo, and others that sit somewhere in between the split nose and a traditional saddle.

De Soto started experimenting with patterns for these saddles, as well as the untraditional saddles such as Speed & Comfort (JCobb) and ISM. I tried a bunch of these new De Soto patterns out (there are 6 and counting) and danged if they don’t improve on every saddle when riding in the tri position.

I tested these while riding on a fit bike, trying different saddles and the seat pads patterned for each. The easy way to test these is just to ride with that pad on a saddle, and then take the saddle off and ride the saddle without. As the engineers say: one test is worth a thousand expert opinions.

I recognize that this is going to ruffle the feathers of companies that take great pride in the durometer of the foam or gel they use throughout the expertly crafted saddles they make, scientifically arrived at through pressure mapping and what have you. But the fact is, more cushion is – for my keister – always mo betta. And it isn’t really the keister we’re talking about.

It also is a blow to the stylishness of, say, a 3D printed Watt, which is a very sexy looking tri saddle. The seat pad covers it up. (See above, at right.) But that part of you that sits on the saddle is kind of like your heart, in matters of love. The heart wants what it wants. So does that part of you that sits the saddle. If it wants a seat pad before you deny this request remember that it is, like the heart, tender and subject to bruising.

De Soto also offers a “custom” option if you have a saddle that doesn’t work with any of the 6 existing patterns and it is my guess that this is De Soto’s symbiotic relationship with you the customer. You buy a saddle pad from the custom program, De Soto gets to experiment with a potential additional pattern.

The De Soto seat pad is $48. It’s glued & blindstitched, in the time honored way those products have been made since, well, 1987.