Fizik Thar Saddle

According to Fizik, the Thar was designed to rectify some issues that commonly arise on 29er mountain bikes. They say that many big wheeled bikes have longer top tubes and slack seat angles that push the saddle more towards the rear of the bike.

With the Thar, the rails are extra long and extend 25mm further towards the rear of the saddle. This means there’s more scope to push the saddle forward, returning some weight to the front end to improve steering stability when climbing, at least that’s the spiel from Fizik.

Sure, we’ve encountered 29ers with slack seat angles; bikes where the saddle gets exponentially further behind the bottom bracket the higher you raise the seatpost, but we’ve encountered the same trait on many 27.5 wheeled bikes too.

My current XC dually – a 27.5 Pivot Mach 4c with 27.5 wheels – has a 72-degree seat angle, and this places the saddle further behind the bottom bracket than I’d like. To compensate I’ve pushed the saddle all the way forward on the rails to achieve an efficient XC climbing position. As the Thar aims to rectify this very problem, I decided to do the unthinkable and fit the 29er specific saddle to my 27.5 bike—sacrilege I know!

Normally I use the nose of the seat as a reference when positioning the saddle, measuring from the centre of the bottom bracket back to the forward most point on the saddle. The Thar has a slightly unusual shape however; the nose is approximately 20mm shorter than most regular designs, so I took a different approach. I used the widest part of the saddle as my guide and put the Thar in the same spot as my regular saddle. Where the standard saddle was pushed all the way forward on the rails, the Thar sat right in the middle of its adjustment range.

Moving Forward
After the first ride I slid it a little further forward and found a position that I was totally happy with—something I simply couldn’t achieve with my regular setup. Visually I thought it was an improvement too; saddles just look ‘right’ when they sit in the middle of the rails and the abbreviated nose makes it less obvious that the seat is positioned further forward in relation to the seat tube.

Saddle comfort is a whole different topic and a very personal one at that. What suits one person can be horribly uncomfortable for another. Measuring 125mm across at the widest point, the Thar is definitely at the slim end of the spectrum. It’s best suited to riders with narrow sit bones. It also has a very flat profile on top and barely dips at all through the mid-section. This makes it easy to slide back and forth to adjust your position but some may find the lack of any dip means you don’t sink into that one comfortable position. For a lightweight saddle, it has plenty of supportive padding and enough shell flex to absorb some trail noise without sinking excessively. Fizik also provides two interchangeable bumpers with the saddle that are meant to adjust the amount of shell flex and damping. I tried both the stock bumper as well as the firmer one and couldn’t really detect the difference.

While the flat-topped design didn’t strike me as super comfortable, it didn’t cause me any real discomfort when mountain biking. The narrow profile was fine for me and it made it easy to slide off the back without snagging my shorts. There no reinforcing around the rear and sides but the Microtex cover seems fairly hardwearing. I could certainly live with the Thar but it wouldn’t rate as a real favourite—obviously you need to sit on one to form your own opinion.

Pitching the Thar as a 29er saddle probably seemed the simplest way to market this saddle but it also sells it short. With its extra-long (95mm) rails and forward positioning, it represents a tidy solution for any bike with an overly slack seat angle, regardless of the wheel size. Fizik offers the Thar in two versions; we tested the lighter Kium railed version which tipped the scales at 235g and sells for $209. It’s also offered with slightly heavier magnesium rails for $159.

Monza Imports
www.monzaimports.com.au